A farm worker prunes fruit trees in The Cape, South Africa. Credits: World Bank via Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
Despite being an upper-middle-income country, hunger is widespread in South Africa and is related to the triple challenges of poverty, unemployment, and inequality.
According to the the Food and Agriculture Organisation, 45 per cent of the population experienced moderate or severe food insecurity in 2018-2020. South Africa presents significant prevalence rates of all three forms of malnutrition – undernutrition, overnutrition, and micronutrient deficiencies.
South Africa also reflects three forms of hunger: chronic, seasonal, and acute:
- Child stunting, an indicator of chronic undernutrition, has plateaued at around 25 per cent in South Africa since before the democratic transition in 1994, meaning that one in four children under five years old has displayed stunted growth for at least the last 30 years.
- Most farm workers on commercial wine and fruit farms in South Africa suffer seasonal hunger during the winter months every year.
- Several children in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa died of severe acute malnutrition in February 2022, a phenomenon that is also emerging in other provinces.
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