South Africa holds a relatively strong position in global food security, ranking first in sub–Saharan Africa and only behind Morocco in the rest of the continent. But those numbers mask the fact that many millions of South Africans still go hungry.
That’s because there are two ways of gauging food security. Firstly, at a national scale, which is when a country produces or imports enough to meet overall demand. Then, there is household food security, when there is enough access to safe and nutritious food in a home.
One of the measures researchers often use to evaluate food security is The Economist’s Global Food Security Index (GFSI). The country improved its ranking in 2022, climbing from 70th to 59th out of 113 countries.
The major issue to remember when looking at indices like these is that subjectivity can never be fully eliminated. Bias can stem from inconsistency in data quality, frequency and reliability across all countries. Weightings and rankings are also tricky because they must be tailored to suit different socio-economic contexts.
In contrast, a survey conducted by the Human Sciences Research Council between 2021 and 2023 found that 17.5% of households experience severe food insecurity. This means that they cut back on meal sizes, reduce the number of meals, run out of food, or even go an entire day without eating. Another 26.7% of households were classified as moderately food insecure, often consuming poor-quality food and sometimes having to limit their portion sizes or meal frequency.
With that out of the way, let’s look into the GFSI. The index is broken down into four components: affordability, availability, quality and safety, and sustainability. Affordability and availability account for two-thirds of the index, making them critical indicators of food security.
In 2022, South Africa saw an improvement in several of these categories, but food affordability deteriorated. The reason? Soaring food inflation, which averaged 9.5% in 2022 and climbed to 11% in 2023 before decelerating to 4.8% in 2024.
In recent years, food prices have been driven up globally by a combination of factors, so the challenge was not unique to South Africa.
These include poor harvests in major producing nations like Brazil and Argentina, China’s surging grain demand following its recovery from a major devastating African Swine Fever epidemic, and the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, which has disrupted vital grain and oilseed supplies.
These pressures have been felt acutely in South Africa, where high unemployment amplifies the effect of rising food costs on consumers.
Thankfully, in 2022 and 2023, South Africa was in a reasonably better place, with abundant supplies, as the La Niña weather event brought good rains across the country and supported agriculture. Even so, prices rose to reflect what was happening internationally.
Fortunately, by the end of 2022, there was a deal that allowed for exports of grain from Ukraine without military attacks by Russia. This helped global agricultural prices fall from their previous record levels. International prices continued to decline after that, which meant that even domestically, food price inflation moderated in 2024.
Quite what happens next year, however, remains in considerable doubt thanks to a new drought expected here at home this summer.
Nonetheless, South Africa is undoubtedly in a better place when it comes to national food security than many other countries.
No time to sit back
But this does not mean the country can afford to be complacent: it must continue to improve food security by expanding its agricultural production and job creation in various sectors of the economy.
At a technical level, the idea of expanding agriculture and agro-processing capacity to boost economic growth and job creation is well established. It was detailed in the 2012 National Development Plan and highlighted again in the 2022 Agriculture and Agro-processing Master Plan, a fact I underscored in my new book.
These include expanding agricultural activity in the former homelands and government land and the release of land along with title deeds to the beneficiaries bought by the government under its Proactive Land Acquisition Strategy (2.5-million hectares are in the government’s books already).
Other steps must incorporate the implementation of an effective blended finance scheme, while the government must increase its investment in water, electricity, road and port infrastructure, and laboratories.
There is plenty of scope for improvement. Limpopo, KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape are the most food-insecure provinces, but they also have vast tracts of underutilised land.
These provinces should be the priority for agricultural development plans, with a strong commercial focus where conditions permit. Once that happens, South Africa’s food security will be that much stronger.
NOTE: I wrote this piece for CurrencyNews, and it first appeared on their website.
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