The South African Food Security Index 2025, commissioned by the Shoprite Group, reviews the state of the country’s food security, examining the systemic challenges impacting food security. It highlights how information gaps, lack of collaboration and inadequate action-driven strategies perpetuate hunger.
The Food Security Index is aimed at keeping the country’s hunger crisis at the forefront of the national conversation. The Index sets out to provide credible, independent and reliable data to monitor progress in addressing hunger over time, in response to the country’s significant research gap on hunger and food security. Although South Africa is considered as food secure, a statistically significant proportion of the country’s population continue to experience hunger and malnutrition. Hunger remains pervasive, impacting at least one in 10 children. Recognising the urgent need for reliable and independent data to monitor progress and close a significant research gap, the Shoprite Group introduced the annual Food Security Index to provide a deeper, more granular understanding of the true state of food security, highlight key gaps in the system and offer a baseline for future measurement.
The report offers a deep dive into dietary diversity, underscoring the pervasive nature of hunger and the complex interplay of factors that shape the nutritional landscape.
The report’s findings and recommendations encourage a ‘whole-of-society approach’, calling for concerted efforts from the government, the private sector and communities to implement comprehensive and sustainable solutions.
Methodology
The methodology was designed to be both rigorous and replicable. The research team, including economists from Stellenbosch University, drew on a wide variety of data sources, including original quantitative household survey data like Statistics South Africa’s General Household Survey (GHS), as well as extensive secondary data from academic literature and policy reports.
The Index is underpinned by four key, internationally recognised dimensions of food security: availability (physical availability of food); access (economic and physical access to food); utilisation (diversity of food consumed); and stability (stability of the other three dimensions over time). The Index ranges from zero (severe food insecurity) to 100 (excellent food security), with 50 as an ‘average’ value.
Key findings
Key insights from the 2025 Index
The South African Food Security Index 2025 reveals a cautious but encouraging rise in the overall Index to 56, up significantly from a low of 44 in 2023, yet still below the pre-pandemic 2019 score of 65.
The marginal improvement in the Index signals a shift back to a period of relative security, largely driven by greater price stability in the availability dimension. This reverses the dramatic drop experienced between the 2019 peak (65) and the 2023 low, a period marked by the impact of the Covid-19 lockdown and high inflationary pressures from the Ukraine war.
Availability and stability: The role of inflation and price stability
Food inflation dropped from a peak of 14% in March 2023 to just under 2% in November 2024, before settling at 5% in early 2025. This moderation was the key driver of the improved Index value in 2024, reflecting stronger food availability and price stability. The report cautions that rising international prices and a weaker rand pose a risk, with projected food inflation for 2025 at 4.5%. However, the cost of the basic ‘thrifty healthy food basket’ is projected to rise by only 2.9% in 2025, potentially easing pressure on the poorest households.
Access: Pervasive and unequal hunger
Despite the aggregate improvement, the reality of hunger remains stark and deeply unequal. Reported hunger was mostly stable, with only a slight increase for the poorest 20% of households. Among households experiencing hunger in 2024, 13% were headed by a female in urban areas, compared to 8% for male-headed households. In rural areas, the disparity was 15% for female-headed versus 12% for male-headed households. Hunger is rising slightly among female-headed households in towns and cities, where own-food production is less feasible.
Households with children that experienced hunger increased from 9% in 2023 to just under 12% in 2024. A 2024 UNICEF report notes that 23% of South African children live in severe food poverty, placing the country among just 20 nations that account for 65% of all affected children worldwide.
The food poverty line was R796 per person per month (May 2024). The percentage of households below this line was roughly equal to those reporting not having their desired food types, underscoring the direct link between income and nutritional satisfaction.
Food choices under scarcity
Low-income households are particularly price sensitive. Financial, food and time scarcity create a ‘scarcity mentality’ that influences decision-making, often towards high-calorie, unhealthy foods for quick comfort, even when a healthier diet is preferred.
Interventions that improve availability and affordable access to food – such as price promotions, meal kits and healthy food vouchers – are most effective for this group. Information-based interventions like labelling are less impactful than those that directly lower the cost of healthy options or reduce the time friction associated with healthy food preparation.
Utilisation: Dietary diversity and the double burden of malnutrition
Food utilisation is critical for the body to make effective use of the food eaten. The report reveals a slight improvement in dietary diversity score, particularly among the poorest households. However, almost a quarter of South Africans still don’t consume a sufficiently diverse diet. The 2024 National Food and Nutrition Security Survey (NFNSS) found that while 80.8% of households consumed more than six food groups, almost 20% showed medium-to-low dietary diversity scores (six or fewer food groups). A high score doesn’t guarantee diet quality as a household can lack vital micronutrients.
Sugars and sugar-rich foods like cereals and condiments were eaten most frequently. Essential protein and vitamin sources like meats (28%) and orange-coloured fruits (19%) showed the lowest consumption rates.
The Free State had the worst score, with nearly half the population (49%) consuming an inadequate diet of three or fewer food groups in a 24-hour window. The Northern Cape followed at 42%.
South Africa faces the ‘double burden of malnutrition’: simultaneous stunting (severe food poverty in children) and high obesity rates (nearly one in three adults obese in 2022). Low incomes often push consumers towards cheaper, calorie-dense ultra-processed foods.
Regulatory and whole-of-society approaches
Structural barriers require regulatory action to create a baseline for improving nutrition outcomes. South Africa’s Health Promotion Levy (sugar tax) is a proven example, leading to a 5.62g per day reduction in sugar intake, with the biggest reduction seen in poorer households.
Progress on promising nutrition policies is slow. The Maternity Support Grant and mandatory front-of-pack warning labels remain stalled in draft form, while the country is overdue for an updated National Food and Nutrition Security Plan (2024–2029).
Countries like Brazil, which have linked school feeding to small farmers and using the NOVA food classification, and India with its POSHAN Abhiyaan mission, demonstrate models for effective cross-sectoral collaboration.
Recommendations
Reversing South Africa’s food insecurity demands a sustained, multi-pronged approach that addresses both structural deficiencies and behavioural drivers. The report recommends a combined structural and behavioural approach that includes the following:
| Prioritise the release of the updated National Food and Nutrition Security Plan and ensure cross-sectoral collaboration. |
| Maintain and expand the high coverage of school feeding schemes and support community food gardens. |
| Build on the success of the sugar tax and expedite implementation of front-of-pack labelling and nutrition-sensitive grants. |
| Support the supply and consumption of diverse, local and culturally relevant foods. |
| Experiment with nutrition-sensitive grants or voucher schemes (like the Khulisa Care model) during critical phases such as pregnancy and early childhood. |
| Create a national dietary diversity monitoring system and conduct more regular household food security surveys to better target interventions and measure progress. |
The Shoprite Group uses low-cost product lines to support its most price-sensitive customers, subsiding over 1.8 million R5 products every week. Its growing basket of R5 products include:
- R5 loaf of 600g brown bread
(unchanged in price since April 2016) - R5 takeaway meals, including a protein-rich ox liver burger
- R5 sanitary pads
- R5 shampoo and conditioner
- R5 body wash.
Case study
The critical role of school feeding schemes and Khulisa Care
Social support programmes show significant expansion and success. School feeding programmes reached a record high in 2024, with over 78% of learners in public schools now benefiting, up from 63% in 2009. These programmes are vital for good nutrition, especially since nearly one in three learners often go hungry at home.
The Khulisa Care programme in the Western Cape is a model for a ‘whole-of-society’ approach. A collaboration between the provincial government, nonprofits and the private sector – including the Shoprite Group – it targets underweight pregnant women and new mothers, providing eligible women with monthly food vouchers, redeemable at Shoprite, to purchase a basket of 10 protein-rich foods.
Find out more
- The full report, The South African Food Security Index 2025, is available at: https://www.shopriteholdings.co.za/docs/shp-food-index-2025.pdf
