Empowering communities: The Food Agency's fight against hunger and food waste in South Africa

Community kitchens are curbing hunger in urban areas. (Photo: Facebook /Food Agency Cape Town)

24 Mar 2025

FoodForward SA’s FoodShare platform uses technology to connect surplus food from retail stores with non-profit organizations, ensuring regular access to quality food even in South Africa's most remote areas

FoodShare is FoodForward SA’s digital platform using technology to connect beneficiary organisations to their nearest food retail partner store, for the regular collection of quality surplus food. In this way, FoodShare is capable of providing access to quality food to the most remote areas across the country.

The Food Agency in Cape Town is using food as an entry point to various social ills through community research and activism. The organisation wants to do away with the indignity of being poor and food insecure.

Nomonde Buthelezi, project coordinator at the agency, says they aim to educate and advocate for the right to food through reading groups, research and creating policy informing bills in order to have change on a national scale.

Buthelezi says there are multiple challenges such as translating academic papers to vernacular languages, and “people are hungry now, so they don't have time to be talking about policy. So we cater for that in our workshops by providing food and transport.”

The organisation partners with multiple community kitchens.

“Hunger has always been there in urban areas, but Covid-19 made it so clear,” said Buthelezi. That’s why they started the data collection programme in areas in the Western Cape.

“Stats SA will not have a real picture of what’s happening in a township,” said Buthelezi. She said the reality was that some people were going four to five days without food.

Triggered

“This work is hard because you get triggered, you think this person has been hiding their situation. I’ll go home now and have a plate of food, but this person will continue in this situation.”

Buthelezi said that what had helped bring immediate relief was community kitchens, and some of these are being assisted by organisations such as FoodFoward SA, a food rescue non-profit organisation that had become a conduit between businesses and those who needed food.

It collected food from the value chain to ensure the right hands received it. Some programmes include warehouse foodbanking.

“We source, collect, and store edible surplus food from the supply chain — farmers, manufacturers, and retailers — and redistribute this food to our network of vetted beneficial owners across South Africa,” and the innovative programme FoodShare.

“FoodShare is FoodForward SA’s very own digital platform using technology to connect our beneficiary organisations to their nearest food retail partner store, for the regular collection of quality surplus food. In this way, FoodShare is capable of providing access to quality food to the most remote areas across the country.”

A community kitchen in Cape Town. (Photo: Facebook /Food Agency Cape Town)

Gogo's community kitchen. (Photo: Facebook /Food Agency Cape Town)

Buthelezi says civil society, academia, government and businesses need to partner to bring sustainable food security.

On 19 September 2023, the Minister of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment published the draft Strategy for Reducing Food Losses and Waste in the Government Gazette for public comment for a period of 30 days. The strategy was further tabled to the Cabinet for approval for implementation on 27 November 2024. Following approval by the Cabinet, the strategy has been returned to the department where it is being finalised for publication and implementation.

Strategy

The strategy is South Africa’s policy response to the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 12 and National Development Plan (NDP) 2030, and it is also aligned with the strategic priorities of the government as it seeks to improve food security in South Africa by reducing undesirable food wastage. The department says “this will be achieved through the application of appropriate tools, new technologies and circular economy approaches, thus mitigating the negative environmental impacts of food waste”.

The Department has also partnered with the Consumer Goods Council to help businesses join the Food Loss and Waste voluntary agreement. Matlou Setati, Executive: Food Safety and Sustainability Initiative answered some Daily Maverick questions for the Council of Consumer Goods.

Are big businesses signing up to the Food Loss and Waste Voluntary Agreement? Is it at the pace you hoped to meet the 2030 Sustainable Development Goal?

“Yes, large enterprises have signed up to the agreement. We currently have 73 businesses signed up to the Consumer Goods Council’s South African Food Loss and Waste Initiative as core signatories. Core signatories are organisations that are able to prevent and reduce food loss and waste in their operations, and are key to meeting the Sustainable Development Goal 12.3’s target of reducing food loss and waste by half by 2030,” Setati said.

Setati says all businesses of all sizes have a role to play, including households. Setati added that the group comprised mostly processors and manufacturers (86%).

“This is a key group given that 49% of all food loss and waste in South Africa is estimated to occur at this stage of the value chain (CSIR, 2021). Five out of the six major retailers form part of this group. Approximately 40% of these signatories are classified as medium to large business according to the South African Revenue Service classification.

“The number of signatories has grown consistently since the time of the launch of the initiative. We have commissioned research to understand the gaps in representation of our signatory base, which we aim to have completed by May this year,” Setati said.

Target

This research would be used to understand where the gaps were and which organisations needed to be recruited to the initiative to ensure that the signatories were representative of the food value chain in South Africa, and to give council an indication if it would be able to meet the target of halving food loss and waste by 2030.

But millions of tons of food are still being wasted, and the council gave insight into the challenges if faced.

Setati noted that there were several complexities that resulted in food loss and waste at the different stages of the food value chain, and within different food businesses.

“This can include a lack of infrastructure (roads, storage facilities, load shedding), supply and demand management, lack of awareness/knowledge, lack of good agricultural inputs and practices, to name a few. We have recently employed two key account managers who will be working with each of our core signatories to understand their individual issues and to help put action plans in place to address these,” said Setati.

“Further to this, we are in the process of conducting desktop research that will be presented to our core signatories to identify the most impactful intervention projects that we can undertake as a collective to achieve significant reductions in food loss and waste in South Africa. This research will be presented to signatories in May this year, and the identification and implementation of key intervention projects will follow,” Setati added,

Shailen Toolsi, a process engineer and sustainability director from Tiger Brands, told Daily Maverick that the company had joined the South African Food Loss and Waste Initiative.

“As a responsible food producer, Tiger Brands is looking at all avenues to optimise its process by driving down food waste. The Food Loss and Waste Initiative provides good engagement within the food supply chain, where we can help each other holistically reduce waste,” she said.

Toolsi said that the benefit of being part of the initiative was receiving “Good insights from the consumer point — what happens to waste from trade. At Tiger we return unsold or expired goods for destruction at our manufacturing site. Understanding the value chain and planning will help reduce the amount of waste being generated. I would encourage other manufacturing, distribution, and sales operations companies to join. Input from a larger collective will allow for greater ideas to reduce food waste,” she said. DM

Food businesses wanting to sign up to the GCSA’s South African Food Loss and Waste Initiative, can do so by contacting CGSSA at [email protected]

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Triggered

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