By Dylan Bettencourt
- The Department of Basic Education ring-fenced R336-million for a pilot nutrition programme for young children at early childhood development centres.
- People working in the early childhood development sector say the money has sat untouched since 2024, while children go hungry.
The Department of Basic Education (DBE) set aside R336-million for a pilot nutrition programme for early childhood development (ECD) centres. The money has been in the budget since 2024, but people in the sector say almost nothing has been done with it.
Tshepo Mantjé, the ECD coordinator with the Equality Collective and Real Reform for ECD, said the money had not been put to work.
“Young children are continuing to be stunted and malnourished, and quite frankly, experiencing deaths from hunger and malnutrition due to the extreme poverty that is in this country. Money that is allocated to young children means nothing unless it reaches the young child,” he said, Daily Maverick reported.
Registered ECD centres currently get a subsidy of R24 per child per day. Of that, 40% must go towards food, leaving about R9.60 per child per day for two meals and a snack. Mantjé said R9.60 was not enough.
“Anyone who is living in the South African economy will know that it is virtually impossible to feed anything meaningful for R9.60,” he said.
Theodora Lutuli runs Khanyisa Nursery and Inkwenkwezi Educare in Nyanga, Cape Town. She said she has heard plenty of talk about a nutrition programme, but nothing has changed on the ground.
“It would make a vast difference, because if a child is not fed properly, it will impact that child for their entire schooling career,” she said.
DBE spokesperson Terence Khala said the two years from 2024 were used for planning and preparation. A tender for service providers was published on 13 March 2026, with a closing date of 9 April 2026.
Khala said the DBE plans a three-year pilot targeting 1,035 ECD centres in the Eastern Cape, with distribution set to begin between April and June 2026.
Pictured above: Young children eating at an early childhood development centre.
Image source: File
