“It Targets Fake Alcohol and Drugs”: The Korean Technology Drawing Tanzania’s Attention

[Financial News] NanoSilikhan Advanced Materials is moving to enter the product-authentication market in East Africa, where counterfeit medicines and alcoholic beverages are causing serious problems. The company took its first step toward local commercialization by showcasing its proprietary security technology to Tanzanian government agencies and local businesses.
NanoSilikhan Advanced Materials announced on the 3rd that it officially demonstrated its nanomaterial-based security technology, MTX (Magnetically Color Changeable Photonic Crystal), at the Tanzania Anti-Counterfeit and Investment Protection Forum held in Tanzania.
About 200 people attended the event, held on the 2nd in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, including officials from government agencies such as Tanzania’s Fair Competition Commission (FCC), the Tanzania Investment and Special Economic Zones Authority (TISEZA), and the Tanzania Medicines and Medical Devices Authority (TMDA), as well as representatives of local manufacturing and distribution companies.
MTX is a security technology that uses nanomaterials to verify whether a product is genuine. The company expects to expand its applications from consumer goods heavily affected by counterfeiting—including medicines, food, alcoholic beverages, and tobacco—to industrial products such as cement.
Tanzanian government agencies also emphasized the need to adopt technology to combat counterfeit products. Khadija Juma Ngasongwa, acting chairperson of the FCC, said, “The response to counterfeit products must shift from post-market enforcement to prevention.” She added, “We expect NanoSilikhan Advanced Materials’ MTX technology to become a new game changer in solving the counterfeit-product problem.”
Gilid Teri, director general of TISEZA, also assessed that the technology “will help protect product quality and verify authenticity,” adding that it could be applied not only to medicines, food, beverages, and cement, but also to items such as soccer tickets.
NanoSilikhan Advanced Materials chose Tanzania as its first target market because of the country’s serious counterfeit-product problem. According to information released by the company, citing data from the Tanzanian government and the Confederation of Tanzania Industries (CTI), more than half of consumer goods in the country and approximately 30% of medicines in circulation were estimated to be counterfeit as of 2023. Uncollected excise taxes in the alcoholic-beverage and tobacco industries were also estimated at more than 1.8 trillion Tanzanian shillings annually.
The company explained that Tanzania is particularly significant as a market-entry point because it is a major port and logistics hub in East Africa. Since goods are distributed to neighboring countries through Tanzania, securing a local business model could enable the company to expand into the East African Community (EAC) market.
Choi Jong-wook, CEO of NanoSilikhan Advanced Materials, said, “It is highly significant that we directly demonstrated the potential for MTX to be applied in the field to the Tanzanian government and key industry representatives.” He added, “Based on the demand we identified locally, we will hold follow-up consultations with government agencies and manufacturing and distribution companies to develop a business model that can be implemented in practice.” He continued, “Starting with Tanzania, we will expand into the East African market and develop MTX into a key growth engine for our global security and product-authentication business.”
[email protected] Choi Doo-sun Reporter