Foundation for Consumer Freedom Advancement

06/06/2026

The Nigerian Senate has passed a new sugary drinks tax. The rate is not in the bill. It will be decided later by the Minister of Finance.

A levy pegged to retail prices rises automatically every time inflation pushes prices up. A bottle that cost ₦150 when the current ₦10 levy began now sells for ₦350 to ₦450. Under the new system, the tax on that bottle climbs with every price increase, with no new vote in the National Assembly required.

We have seen this before. When the ₦10 levy arrived in 2022, the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria projected the beverage sector would lose 40% of sales revenue, while government collected ₦81 billion in excise but lost ₦197 billion in other taxes. Consumption barely changed. Prices did.

FCFA is calling on the House of Representatives to decline concurrence until the rate is fixed in law, capped, and tested against household food budgets.

Read our full statement:

Nigeria's Senate has replaced the ₦10 per litre sugary drinks excise with a percentage levy tied to retail prices, with the exact structure left to the Min

30/05/2026

Today is World V**e Day.

A new five-country Ipsos survey commissioned by We Are Innovation gives the evidence FCFA has been calling for. Over 4,000 people across the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, and Japan, all living with or close to someone who quit smoking, were asked what they saw.

Eighty-five percent of respondents in the US, UK, and Japan support adult smokers' rights to access innovative ni****ne products. Support rises by more than ten points among those who personally watched someone switch.

Eighty-nine percent of people who saw a friend or relative use heated to***co products to quit consider them effective. V**es: 84%. Ni****ne pouches: 87%. These figures rival prescription medication.

The survey did not run in African countries. But the relief from secondhand smoke, the improved household life, and the social benefits do not change at the border. African consumers are not biologically distinct from American or Japanese consumers.

On World V**e Day, FCFA stands with the consumers who already know what the data confirms. African adults deserve the same evidence-based policy the rest of the world is moving toward.

Read the full statement: https://thefcfa.org/press-releases/what-4000-households-can-teach-african-policymakers

Survey by Ipsos for We Are Innovation, April 2026.

28/05/2026

Kenya's Finance Bill 2026 would add 16% VAT to every fee charged on M-Pesa and other mobile money platforms. It would be the fourth tax increase on mobile money in three years.

Mary, a vegetable seller in Nairobi's Gikomba market, pays her suppliers, receives payments, sends her mother's upkeep and pays her child's school fees all through her phone. She is not a tax loophole. She is the entire point of mobile money.

Kenya does not need to guess what comes next. Uganda introduced a mobile money tax in 2018, and the value of transactions fell by nearly a quarter in a single month. People simply went back to cash.

The Bill is still before Parliament's Departmental Committee on Finance and National Planning. The committee should strike the VAT extension on mobile money before it advances.

Read Linda Kavuka's full piece for FCFA:

Kenya's Finance Bill 2026 would add 16% VAT to mobile money fees — the fourth increase in three years on a service millions of low-income Kenyans rely on daily. Linda Kavuka argues why Parliament's Finance Committee should strike the provision before it advances.

22/05/2026

Kenya's To***co Control (Amendment) Bill, 2024 is being sold to Kenyans as public health protection. It is nothing of the sort. It is paternalism dressed up as policy.

The Bill redefines "smoking" to include va**ng, then applies the same rules for ci******es to ni****ne pouches and electronic ni****ne products. A former smoker who switched to ni****ne pouches to quit would now be treated under law as identical to someone smoking a pack of ci******es a day. That is not regulation. That is a category error.

Sweden has one of the lowest daily smoking rates in the European Union because it kept smoke-free alternatives affordable and accessible. The UK maintains the legal distinction between ci******es and reduced-risk products for the same reason. Kenya is choosing to ignore all of it.

The Bill's sponsors invoke youth protection. But Kenya already prohibits the sale of ni****ne products to minors. The people affected by flavour bans and pouch restrictions are not teenagers. They are adult Kenyan smokers trying to quit.

Kenya's Parliament should reopen public participation and rewrite the Bill around risk proportionality. Anything less is a gift to combustible ci******es and the illicit market.

Kenyan adults are not children. The law should stop pretending otherwise.

Read the full FCFA statement: https://thefcfa.org/press-releases/kenya-to***co-bill-treats-adults-like-children