15.8 million South Africans went hungry in 2025 while the shops stayed full

South Africa is not short of food. About 15.8 million people still did not have enough of it in 2025.

That is the gap the Department of Agriculture is describing as Food Security Month closes. Domestic agricultural production and imports keep staple foods and other commodities available in national markets, the department says. What fails is access at household level, and the department’s Acting Director for Subsistence Farming, Thulile Dlamini, names the drivers plainly: poverty, unemployment, income inequality, hazards and food price volatility within an open, market-based food system.

The number comes from Statistics South Africa’s General Household Survey 2025, which found that about 15.8 million people experienced inadequate to severely inadequate access to food. That is a decline from 16.3 million in 2023 and 15.9 million in 2024. The survey monitors household food access annually, and the direction of travel is down, but the figure is still roughly one in four people in the country.

Dlamini told SAnews that national availability does not automatically translate into food security for every household. The department works from the National Policy on Food and Nutrition Security, approved by Cabinet in 2013, which defines food and nutrition security as “access to and control over the physical, social and economic means to ensure sufficient, safe and nutritious food at all times, for all South Africans, in order to meet the dietary requirements for a healthy life”.

Section 27(1)(b) of the Constitution guarantees everyone the right to have access to sufficient food, and Section 28(1)(c) guarantees every child the right to basic nutrition. Dlamini said those provisions place an obligation on the state to take reasonable legislative and other measures, within available resources, to realise the rights progressively. The August 2014 Government Gazette described the policy as a broad framework for fulfilling that constitutional imperative and a guide to national, provincial and local government.

The nutrition picture is not only about empty plates. Dlamini said undernutrition, hidden hunger, being overweight and obesity all form part of the country’s nutrition security situation, mainly as outcomes of nutrient-poor diets. The National Food and Nutrition Security Survey of 2023 found national prevalence of stunting at 28.8% among children aged 0 to 5, wasting at 5.3% and underweight at 7.8%. Overweight prevalence was 25.3% and obesity 32.1%. The same survey found 63.5% of South African households were food insecure to some degree.

Dlamini said those results have been used to target the worst affected districts when programmes are implemented, and that the survey will now be conducted every five years. Between those rounds the department relies on annual instruments such as the General Household Survey.

On the ground, the department’s answer leans on backyard and community gardens to raise household food production, backed by seeds, fertiliser, livestock and other agricultural inputs, technical support, mechanisation and production infrastructure, training, and links between producers and markets. Dlamini said the programmes are designed to let subsistence producers move progressively towards smallholder and even commercial participation in agricultural value chains where that is viable. Food banks and community distribution networks, run by the Department of Social Development with public and private partners, collect and redistribute food to vulnerable households and community feeding schemes.

For smallholder producers, the department points to the South African Good Agricultural Practices certification programme, run with the Perishable Products Export Control Board. At its 2025/26 Budget Vote in May the department announced a R3.2 billion allocation to food security and farmer support programmes. It said at the time that at least 740 producers had been supported through SA-GAP, with plans to reach 1 700 more farmers in the coming year. The Smallholder Horticulture Empowerment and Promotion programme works on raising smallholder income through productivity, group management and treating farming as a business, and the Agriculture and Agro-Processing Master Plan carries the public-private partnership work on production, under-used farming land and high-value export crops.

Broader coordination sits with the second iteration of the National Food and Nutrition Security Plan, which builds on the first, covering 2018 to 2023. Dlamini said nutrition-related solutions are built into all three goals of the plan and that the agriculture sector addresses the underlying causes of malnutrition through improved availability and access, diversified production, nutrient-dense and indigenous crops, and directing support to vulnerable households and districts. The department is still engaging provinces on the second iteration so that stakeholder input shapes the specific response programmes.

Among the lessons from the first iteration, Dlamini said, is that legislative mechanisms are crucial for coordination and should be strengthened to enforce the constitutional right to sufficient food. Local context matters, including the informal food sector and urban food insecurity. She was blunt about the design flaw: “The centralised design of the plan restricts responsiveness to localised needs and emerging challenges.”

October also carries World Food Day, commemorated on 16 October and proclaimed by the Conference of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations in 1979. According to Chapter 2 of the FAO’s State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2026 report, at least 645 million people faced hunger in 2025, nearly one in 13 people worldwide.

With below-normal rainfall anticipated over summer, Dlamini advised farmers to wait for sufficient moisture before planting, to follow weather and climate forecasts, and to prioritise drought-tolerant and locally adapted cultivars. She urged communities to conserve existing water supplies, limit waste and losses, harvest water during rainy days and re-use it, and told farmers to contact their local agricultural offices for advice on control measures.

Her closing practical note is the household one. Where space is limited, growing leafy greens in small patches and sharing produce with neighbours makes a difference. For the 15.8 million people the survey counted, the difference is the whole question.

This report is drawn from SAnews (South African Government News Agency), “Food security: Bridging the gap between availability and access”, published 25 October 2026: https://www.sanews.gov.za/features-south-africa/food-security-bridging-gap-between-availability-and-access. The article is a departmental feature interview rather than the underlying survey records, and the figures are as SAnews reports them.