Ignoring child nutrition in South Africa can’t be the next big mistake

President Cyril Ramaphosa regrets that early childhood development (ECD) was not prioritised from the advent of democracy. At the Bana Pele Leadership Summit last month, he turned to Minister of Basic Education Siviwe Gwarube and said: “I’m the first in government to admit that we have made a mistake. We should have started with early childhood development 30 years ago.” This is the second time in a month that he’s expressed remorse over not investing in young children.

The consequences of that error are profound. If we had invested in ECD, we would have set the stage for better learning outcomes, greater employability, and better productivity and economic growth. I say “set the stage” because ECD is necessary but not sufficient for human capital development, and it must still be followed by good education and training. But basic education depends both on the ability of teachers to teach and of pupils to learn, and our failure to invest in the foundations of learning has sucked South Africa deeper into the inequality trap.

The government took a major step to rectify that failure by announcing an additional R10-billion over the next three years to strengthen early learning programmes, increasing the daily per capita subsidy and expanding access to a further 750,000 children. It is cause for celebration, but we must reflect on what it took to get us to this point. 

It’s been a long journey. Those pioneers who started crèches and preschools in their twenties have now reached retirement age. They developed local communities but also organised countrywide through the National ECD Alliance and the South African Congress for ECD. Their work was affirmed in the 1990s and early 2000s by an avalanche of international evidence that quality early learning improves a nation’s education, health and wealth. It was then picked up by a group of funders who have championed the cause for the past 15 years, working with the South African government and civil society partners to develop national policy, expand public financing, build information systems, create service delivery platforms and design instruments to measure impact. Other corporate social investment piled in as well to support the growing network of early learning programmes.

In the mid 2010s, senior officials in the governing party began to accept that high dropout rates and the quality of matric passes would not improve while half the children continued to enter school with huge learning deficits. National Treasury started to take notice and created a Conditional Grant for ECD, which doubled public spending on early learning. Then, in 2022, the Department of Basic Education took control of ECD from the Department of Social Development and developed a new strategy to scale up the provision of early learning which has just been funded through the national Budget. The increase is substantial, though not fully adequate. So here we are, celebrating the correction of a big mistake. But it’s taken an awful lot of persuasion.

Now, we hope to move rapidly up the World Bank’s Human Capital Index, which estimates that the average child born in South Africa today will achieve only 43% of their potential human capital. That low score is driven by two main factors. The first is that the average child stays in school for 11 years but ends up with the equivalent of a primary school education. Why? High rates of school dropout and poor academic results mean that the average pupil achieves only 5.6 years of effective learning. That’s one of the main reasons that South Africa ranked 80th out of 170 countries for productivity growth in 2015-2021.

The heightened commitment to ECD could begin to change that, so long as we understand that proper investments in early learning will only fix half of our mistake. 

Early childhood development does not only require brain stimulation, but love, safety and food as well. I said that there were two reasons that South Africa scores so poorly on the World Capital Index, and the second is its high rate of nutritional stunting. More than a quarter of our children’s brains are damaged by malnutrition, due to inadequate protein and micronutrient intake and repeated infections from unhygienic living circumstances. And that is a problem that the government cannot fix on its own.

Sure, social grants have had a positive effect, and stunting is 31% lower among child beneficiaries compared with children who are eligible but do not receive grants. But the Household Affordability Index published by Pietermaritzburg Economic Justice and Dignity showed that, in March 2025, the average cost to feed a child a basic nutritious diet was R951 a month. Compare that with the Child Support Grant of R560. While about 80% of eligible children receive the grant, the other fifth does not, mainly due to documentation issues and administrative hiccups. It would cost the state almost R80-billion more to close that food gap by making up the shortfall among current recipients and bringing all children into the safety net; money it does not have.

So, poorer parents buy what they can afford with R560 a month or less, which are cheap starches, sugar and cooking oil. Children are fed pap and rice, but not enough of the protein that is so amply stocked on supermarket shelves across the country. Without enough protein, children will remain stunted, as will the country’s long-term economic outlook. In the face of fiscal constraint, we have no option: business is going to have to come to the table.

Over the past two years there have been numerous attempts to persuade the food industry to discount a basket of protein-rich staples, without success. This intervention is in the Medium-Term Development Plan 2024-2029 as a strategic intervention to reduce poverty and improve livelihood. However, industry has hidden behind the position conveyed to the National Economic Development and Labour Council by Business Unity South Africa (Busa) that its members are too cash-strapped to consider such a scheme. For an organisation committed to economic growth, it’s astoundingly short-sighted. If Busa is genuinely concerned about the future of business in South Africa, it would urge its members to step up and find a way. A small loss of profit today to guarantee cheaper protein for children will reap major economic windfalls in the future.

South Africa’s food industry makes billions in profits. While some of the retailers have experienced trading difficulties, a 2023 review by the Competition Commission found that the weighted operating margin for South African retailers was more than a third higher than the other countries reviewed. In other words, they take more profit off their customers than their global counterparts. One major retailer is starting to engage, but it is a big mistake for organised business to argue that the food industry is too busy trying to make money to have to feed the nation. It’s another one that the country can’t afford to make. DM  

David Harrison is CEO of the DG Murray Trust.