A nation at risk: New research findings expose deepening household food insecurity

Rising food prices, high unemployment, and stagnant incomes have left countless households unable to afford adequate nutrition, pushing many into severe hardship and even starvation. Across South Africa, food insecurity is placing unbearable pressure on families, eroding wellbeing and deepening social and economic inequalities.

Concerned about this escalating crisis, FoodForward SA commissioned the University of Cape Town’s Southern Africa Labour & Development Research Unit (SALDRU) in 2024 to conduct a comprehensive national study to quantify the depth and extent of household food insecurity in South Africa. The 18-month research project, funded by the FoodForward SA Foundation, will provide Forward SA with critical insights to inform and strengthen its national food security strategies over the next three years.

The research project was built around two main objectives:

Measurement:

The SALDRU research team measured the prevalence, severity, and persistence of food insecurity using validated instruments such as the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES) and the Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS), and triangulated findings with prices, expenditure, and labour-market data.

Explanation:

They identified key drivers – employment shocks and food price spikes, while quantifying the mitigating roles of cash transfers and household composition.

The following research methods and processes were followed to gather the data:

1. Surveys: SALDRU combined national household surveys with a survey of the severity of food insecurity among vulnerable households.

2. Measurement: They applied advanced research tools to derive consistent household-level food insecurity severity scores.

3. Analytics: They used multivariate models and decompositions to pinpoint drivers and local variation.

4. Equity lens: Results were disaggregated by age and gender of household head, presence of children, disability, migration, and urban vs rural status.

5. Ethics and reproducibility: Protocols covered consent, anonymisation, secure storage, and fully documented, version-controlled codes that are securely stored and archived.
   

Key research findings:

The following key findings were discovered:

1. One in 10 female-headed households are now severely food insecure – double the rate of male-headed households.

2. The Eastern Cape appears to be the epicentre of the crisis, with 12,35% of households facing severe food insecurity, which is triple the rate in the Western Cape.

3. Levels and persistence of food insecurity: Food insecurity spiked in 2023 and remained elevated relative to pre-pandemic baselines.

4. Who was most affected? Households with children, youth-headed households, and those with unstable or informal work faced higher severity and volatility.

5. Where? Hotspots clustered in parts of the Eastern Cape, Limpopo, Northwest, and low-income urban settlements, with substantial intra-municipal variation.

6. Drivers: Employment shocks and food price increases were the strongest predictors of transitions into severe food insecurity; cash transfers mitigated shocks but did not fully offset rapid price rises.
   

How households are coping

The research team hosted a group discussion of food insecure people to understand how households are trying to cope under the severe pressure, and found the following:

• As household situations become more desperate over time, some of the coping strategies escalate from portion cuts and meal stretching to meal skipping, choosing cheaper staples, borrowing and using store credit and high-cost debt, to the sale of assets, and foregoing the purchasing of crucial medication

• Peaks of food insecurity were experienced around grant-cycle troughs and seasonal job gaps.

• Food donations and community kitchens buffer acute hunger but are constrained by timing, quantity, predictability, and transport or queue costs.

• Psychosocial strain was evident, with sadness and grief common in the response to open-ended questions.

• Many households discuss scarcity with children; adults often skip meals so children can eat, yet child hunger remains widespread.

The quiet crisis unfolding

Across South Africa, hunger is not only widespread, it is also deeply layered and complex. For millions of South Africans, hunger is a silent and daily reality. It may not always resemble famine or visible destitution, but it is there – behind closed doors, manifesting in painful and devastating ways.

The research findings highlight worsening hardship among vulnerable households, reinforcing the urgent need for collective, systems-based interventions to ensure food security and protect affected communities.

About FoodForward SA

FoodForward SA’s core focus is the recovery of edible surplus food from across the food system, to address two urgent challenges:

• Reducing food loss and waste and its resultant methane emissions that cause climate change
  
• Using this unsellable but still edible food to address food insecurity across South Africa. The not-for-profit organisation provides food to nearly 1,000,000 vulnerable people daily through a network of 2,500 registered and vetted beneficiary organisations that undertake life-saving work in underserved urban and rural communities.