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- Food for a child aged 2 to 6 costs R13.06 a day, and R7.35 for 9 to 23 months, at September prices.
- A 20-child centre needs R4,768.47 a month for food, about R928 more than the subsidy’s food part provides.
Feeding older children properly at a crèche costs more than the government’s food subsidy covers, according to a new costing released on Thursday, 15 October.
Zero2Five Trust, the Pietermaritzburg Economic Justice and Dignity Group and registered dietitian Philippa Barnard released the Early Childhood Development Nutrition Basket during National Nutrition Week. It lists the foods and amounts that national nutrition guidance says young children need at an early childhood development (ECD) centre, and puts a price on them.
The basket includes fortified staples such as maize meal and brown bread, vegetables, fruit, beans and lentils, eggs, tinned pilchards, milk and maas, margarine, oil and peanut butter. Foods can be swapped for local ones if the meal still does the same nutritional job.
The groups priced it at supermarkets where ECD practitioners buy food, in September 2026. Feeding a child aged 9 to 23 months costs R7.35 a day. For a child aged 2 to 6 years it costs R13.06. For an example centre with 20 children, four younger and 16 older, the average is R11.92 a child a day. That comes to R4,768.47 a month, counting 20 days.
The government’s ECD subsidy for 2026/27 includes R9.60 a child a day for food. If every child in the example centre was covered by the subsidy, the centre would be about R928 short each month. If only 70% of the children are covered, the shortfall rises to about R2,080 a month. The younger children’s food costs R2.25 a day less than the subsidy’s food part, but the older children’s food costs R3.46 a day more.
Not all ECD centres receive funding from the Department of Basic Education, and not every child at a funded centre qualifies for the subsidy. Real Reform for ECD says entry-level “bronze” centres make up about 60% of all centres, operate in informal settlements and deep rural areas, and do not qualify for the subsidy. Its coordinator, Tshepo Mantjé, said this in May.
The costing covers food only. Labour, cooking fuel, water, cleaning materials, storage and equipment are not included, so the groups say the figures should not be read as the full cost of feeding children. The basket also puts no price on breast milk or formula, so the lower cost for younger children does not mean they are cheaper to feed.
The groups will track the basket’s price every month from October, as food prices change. They say the aim is to give centres, planners and government a clear price to work with. The basket does not replace the Department of Health’s nutrition guidelines, and is not meant to prevent stunting on its own. The costing is a pilot, and the groups describe the detailed table as a draft that is being tested.
The daily subsidy stays at R24 a child in 2026/27, the Sowetan reported after the February budget. The early childhood development organisation Ilifa Labantwana has said the mini-budget should raise it to at least R27 a child a day. Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana delivers the mini-budget on Wednesday, 21 October.
Money set aside for nutrition has also been slow to reach children. Daily Maverick reported in March that the Department of Basic Education’s ring-fenced budget for a pilot nutrition programme for ECD centres appeared to have gone largely unused over two years, according to Mantjé, who is an ECD coordinator with the Equality Collective and Real Reform for ECD. The budget rose to R336-million in 2025/26 and R772-million in 2026/27.
