National Food and Nutrition Security Plan for South Africa (2018-2023).

This National Food and Nutrition Security Plan defines the country’s collective response to the challenge of food insecurity and malnutrition, which has devastating consequences for health, livelihoods and the economy as a whole. This Plan, according to the Sustainable Development Goals, aims at: significantly improving food security and reducing malnutrition in all its forms, in order to afford South Africa’s people opportunities to lead healthy and productive lives. Its main goal is to implement a priority set of actions to deliver significant improvements in food and nutrition status by 2023, to accentuate the urgency of South Africa’s response to food insecurity and malnutrition challenges; interventions to address vulnerability to hunger, undernutrition and under overweight and obesity, which are at least as ambitious as the global targets. This Plan is structured as follows: preface; situation analysis of food and nutrition security in South Africa; approach to the development of the National Food and Nutrition Security Plan (NFNSP); game changers in the NFNSP; implementation of the NFNSP; monitoring and evaluation of the Plan; priority district; costing and financing. The Plan defines the following relevant terms: agricultural land; agri-park model; food accessibility; food availability; food chain; food control; food insecurity; food utilisation; food; household; hunger; infant; malnutrition; risk of hunger; social protection; vulnerability.
The National Food and Nutrition Security Plan actions are guided by 17 indicators, inspired by three imperatives: a) key national goals to reduce poverty, inequality and unemployment; b) the six World Health Assembly indicators for nutrition; c) Food security indicators from the General Household Survey. The main indicators are: reduced experience of hunger; percentage of household and individuals experiencing hunger; decrease in months of food shortages among the poor, vulnerable and marginalised; reduced prevalence of under-nutrition and over-nutrition in children; prevalence of low birth weight; reduced prevalence of over-nutrition in adults; vitamin and minerals deficiencies. The implementation of goals and mission of the Plan is achieved through six strategic objectives and related key interventions: establishment of a multi-sectoral Food and Nutrition Security Council to oversee alignment of policies, coordination and implementation of programmes and services which address food and nutrition security; establish inclusive local food value chains to support access to nutritious and affordable food; expand targeted social protection measures and sustainable livelihood programmes, including: safe and nutritious food, principles based on Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) system and good hygiene practices, safe water, sanitation and health care; scale up high impact nutrition interventions targeting women, infants and children; influence people across the life cycle to make informed food and nutrition decisions through an integrated communications strategy; develop a monitoring and evaluation system for food and nutrition security, including an integrated risk- management system.
Programmes implemented by government departments to address food and nutrition security concern: involvement of owners, managers, professionals, skilled employers in agricultural sector to encourage inclusive processes; improvement of the livelihoods of rural poor through coordinating the effective implementation of socioeconomic infrastructure; promoting and facilitating agricultural development, by targeting beneficiaries of land reform’s restitution and redistribution; preparing a plan for irrigation scheme rehabilitation; focuses on land-resource management through the promotion of sustainable-use practices; land-tenure reform programmes for food security; school feeding to provide nutritious meals;