Shoprite, which subsidises a million R5 loaves of bread a week, has released research to highlight just how many South Africans go hungry, warning that almost one in two people will still be food insecure in 2025.
It commissioned global firm World Data Lab to use modelling to estimate what SA’s food insecurity would look like in 2025 compared with 2020. Food insecurity was defined, in line with global standards, as missing an entire day of food a few times a year or once a year.
In SA, hunger is likely far more severe than a few days of missed food in a year. However, SA lacks up-to-date survey information collected from citizens on their experience of malnutrition, empty cupboards and hunger.
Shoprite’s food index data showed that in 2020, 52% of SA were food insecure missing a few days of food a year. Its projections are that by 2025 this will have dropped to 49%.
“To deal with the problem we need to better understand it and the food index provides us with some insight. Although the modelling shows an improvement by 2025, the reality is that in two years’ time just under half the population will still be struggling with hunger. That’s why we must urgently escalate the rate of people escaping food insecurity,” said Sanjeev Raghubir, head of sustainability and CSI at the Shoprite Group.
“Doing so will improve not only their prospects but that of the country.”
Reasons that the food security situation may improve marginally is that Shoprite's research compared projected figures in 2025 to figures in 2020, at the height of lockdowns, lost income and the shutdown of school feeding schemes.
Shoprite also surmised that the efforts of “corporates, NGOs and government's decision to pay R350 social relief of distress grants, are having some effect on food insecurity”.
The group said that “we carefully monitor our own efforts, as do other companies and NGOs involved in similar work, and the numbers suggest these also have an impact
Retailers are particularly invested in helping address hunger. Pick n Pay runs school feeding schemes and meals for the needy under its Feed the National Campaign and Woolworths donates significant amounts of food to charities.
The 2012 SA National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (Sanhanes) showed regular hunger and frequent concern about having enough to eat, a stricter measure than food insecurity, fell from 1999 to 2008. Frequent hunger halved from 52.3% of the population to 25.9%.
The improvement in nutrition coincided with SA's economic growth and employment figures, but no improvement was seen after 2008. The Sanhanes research also revealed one in four children were stunted and underdeveloped, due to malnutrition, with the problem being particularly severe in babies and toddlers aged 0 to 3.
Shoprite said it hoped to keep hunger “in the public eye and encourage everyone who can, to ramp up their efforts to escalate the decline in food insecurity”.
“The other point about tackling food insecurity is that we don’t need to start from scratch. There are plenty of existing programmes such that people can support.”
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