15 million South Africans don’t get enough to eat every day: 4 solutions

At least 15 million South Africans suffer from food insecurity. That means they don’t have enough nutritious food to live healthy lives.

This is due to a combination of factors, including unemployment, poverty, inequality and food system failures.

More than 1,000 children die from malnutrition each year. This compares unfavourably with 350 child deaths from malnutrition in Brazil, which has more than three times South Africa’s population, and 269 child deaths in Colombia, which has about the same per capita income as South Africa.

A robust indicator of chronic hunger is child stunting. Stunting in South Africa has flatlined at around 25%, or one in four children, since the early 1990s. Other middle-income countries such as Brazil and Peru have made impressive progress. Peru halved its rate from 28% in 2008 to 13% in 2016, after the president committed to reducing stunting.

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How can South Africa’s government deliver on the right to food and begin the urgent process of eradicating hunger?

We have worked on food security and food justice for many years. We’ve researched the links between social protection and hunger and between food systems and nutrition, and the cost of hunger.

Based on this experience, our view is that food shortages are not a cause of hunger in South Africa. The country produces and imports all the food it needs. Instead, the problem is unequal access to food. While some South Africans live in a world of abundance, with no budget constraints, millions more survive below the food poverty line, unable to afford even a basic nutritious diet for their families.

We believe that the government must deliver on the constitutional right to food and begin the urgent process of eradicating hunger. It can do this by expanding the social grant system, extending the school nutrition programme, reducing food waste, and ensuring access to land for low-income rural and peri-urban households.

Above all, a coherent and coordinated strategy for tackling hunger is needed, led by a minister of food, following models like Brazil’s Zero Hunger initiative. In December 2024, Brazil handed over the G20 presidency to South Africa, after it launched the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty. South Africa should embrace the embrace the spirit and focus of the alliance to develop its own Zero Hunger strategy.

Four steps to end hunger

The South African government pays out 19 million social grants a month, or 26 million if the 9 million recipients of the special social relief of distress grant are included. Without these cash transfers, poverty and malnutrition in the country would be even higher. But they are inadequate, especially in a context of high and rising food prices.

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Pregnant women must receive a maternal grant.
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Firstly, the following changes should be made to social grant payments.

An immediate increase in the child support grant, followed by further increases. The goal should be to get this grant, which is currently below the food poverty line at R530 a month (US$28), to R1,634 (US$34). This is the minimum amount of money needed to meet basic needs, including nutritious food, clothing and shelter.

Pregnant women should receive a maternal support grant from 12 weeks of pregnancy, to reduce the risk of low birth weight.

Social grants should increase to match inflation every year.

Secondly, the National School Nutrition Programme, which provides one nutritious meal to all learners in poorer primary and secondary schools, has limited impact because meals are provided only on weekdays during school terms.

The programme should be boosted in the following ways:

The Department of Basic Education must deliver adequate nutrition to all children in early learning programmes, all year round.

Programmes for school-age children should be extended to ensure that they all receive at least one nutritious meal every day, including on weekends and school holidays.

Adequate funding should be given to school food gardens and nutrition education. Moreover, the national school nutrition programme starts too late to address under-5 stunting. It only begins when children enter grade R, aged 5.

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Thirdly, interventions are needed in the food system.

Prices of essential food items should be regulated, to keep them affordable for low-income South Africans and to encourage shifts in consumption choices towards healthier, more nutritious diets.

Positive dietary choices can also be promoted through the use of subsidies, discounts or vouchers on “best buy” foods, either for all consumers or for shoppers receiving social grants. They could be given vouchers for nutritious food items along with their cash transfers. Food subsidies or vouchers must include foods that are protein-rich (meat, fish, eggs, dairy), since protein is highly inaccessible to the poor.

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Government must extend social security protections to seasonal and informal workers during periods of unemployment and underemployment. Seasonal hunger requires specific attention. Seasonal farm workers – most of whom are women – have low incomes, few savings, and limited access to unemployment insurance. They face food insecurity and hunger during the off-season winter months.

The government’s land redistribution programme should prioritise securing access to land for poor agrarian or peri-urban households, and providing support (water, inputs, extension advice) to farm that land. This would help vulnerable groups which derive most of their food from production.

Agrarian households (smallholder farmers, farm workers, farm dwellers) are poorer and more food insecure, especially the female-headed households who survive below the food poverty line. When farm women with food gardens have direct access to fresh vegetables, their dietary diversity improves, and they earn income by selling produce to meet their basic needs.

Reforms are needed to bolster smallholder farmers.
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Lastly, steps must be take to reduce loss and waste in the food system.

A third of food produced in South Africa, 10 million of 31 million tons, goes to waste each year. This is equivalent to 30 billion meals, in a context where an estimated 20 billion meals would be enough to end hunger. The government has committed to halving food waste by 2030, in its draft food losses and waste strategy of 2023. It must be finalised and operationalised.

Next steps

These interventions would cost money. And the government will argue that it is doing all it can to address hunger with the resources available.

There are many options for raising additional resources to address the hunger crisis – as seen when the government found R500 billion (US$33 billion) to address the COVID-19 crisis in 2020.

The government should also consider raising additional revenue by introducing a wealth tax targeting high-net-worth individuals. This could be used to increase social grants or subsidise nutritious foods.

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Finally, government needs to tackle hunger in a coordinated way. Several government departments, including agriculture, social development and health, address issues related to food security. However, no government ministry focuses specifically on hunger.

The president should appoint a minister of food to address the hunger crisis along the lines of the special minister of electricity position established in 2023 to deal with the country’s energy supply problem.

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At the same time, a national food commission should be established, to monitor and coordinate all initiatives that focus on the goal of eradicating hunger.

The government should be guided by the priorities set down by a new coalition – the Union Against Hunger – which is due to be launched on 26 February. The initiative is a coalition of civil society organisations and academics (the authors are among the founding members). It has compiled a list of 10 demands that reflect our analysis of the causes of hunger and recommended solutions. They include realising everyone’s constitutional right to food, halving child stunting by 2030 and making nutritious food accessible to all.