Reading Time: 2 minutes
The civil society organisation, SA Harvest, says that the incoming government needs to address food insecurity and hunger affecting millions of South Africans.
South Africa faces challenges ranging from high unemployment and poverty; to the energy crisis and rising cost of living.
These negatively affect the security of food, which becomes expensive and inaccessible to many.
The organisation’s CEO and founder, Alan Browde says, “They must create a ministry of food. No matter how absolutely and completely evil they were, the apartheid government had a system which worked in terms of the price control and the distribution of food and the protection of small farmers and the ANC didn’t want to use that. Not only because of the benefactors but because it had been a method of the apartheid government. So yes, we believe that there should be a ministry of food and intervention. You can’t have a pure capitalist system when it comes to food in a developing country, we have to have a type of mixed economy approach.”
PODCAST | SA Harvest calls for the newly elected government to address hunger:
Food security report
According to a Shoprite Food Index report compiled by the World Data Lab, food security report published last year, 49% of the South African population will go to bed hungry by 2025.
However, despite the bleak forecast, the index shows that the incidence of people escaping food insecurity is improving.
In August 2023, food inflation in the country slowed to 8.2% from 10% the previous month.
Provincially, Limpopo will suffer the worst food insecurity in 2025.
“By 2025, World Data Lab forecast 49 % of South Africa population will be living in food scarcity conditions and 21 % of children will be stunted in 2025,” says Jack Gisby from World Data Lab.
79% of children in South Africa are born into poverty, and according to the World Food and Agriculture Organisation, nearly 20 million people across the globe are without food.
Shoprite Group says this is why it sees food insecurity as a crisis as big as the COVID-19 pandemic. The Group says due to this, it seeks to intensify its efforts to reduce hunger in the country through collaborations with different stakeholders.
More details in the report below:
-Additional reporting by Nothando Magudulela
