CIVIL SOCIETY WORKSHOP ON THE National Food and Nutrition Security Plan (NFNSP)

Government is developing a new National Food and Nutrition Security Plan (NFNSP-2, 2027–2037) and has committed to provincial consultations from September 2026, leading to a National Indaba in November 2026. The Union Against Hunger and the Just Transition in the Food System Network, with support from the Institute for Economic Justice and the DSTI-NRF Centre of Excellence in Food Security, convened around 70 civil society organisations, grassroots groups, academics and provincial delegations for two days to build a shared understanding of the draft NFNSP and agree on a common set of priorities and a coordinated approach to the consultations.

Households in South Africa continue to face severe hardship: 26.7% are moderately food insecure and 17.5% severely food insecure, with the burden falling hardest on working-class women. More than 1 in 4 children are stunted due to poor nutrition. Participants were united by an urgency to ensure the new Plan (the NFNSP) responds meaningfully to this crisis, contributes to building a more just, ecologically sustainable and gender equal food system, and avoids the fate of the previous plan, which was underresourced and not implemented effectively.

The workshop was convened by the Union Against Hunger and the Just Transition in the Food System Network (supported by the Institute for Economic Justice and the DSTI-NRF Centre of Excellence in Food Security), which bring complementary strengths. The Union Against Hunger is a grassroots mobilisation movement (“a movement of movements”) built around organising communities and provinces with the aim of eradicating hunger, malnutrition, and food system injustice in South Africa. The Just Transition Network works across climate policy, the right to food, and decent livelihoods. It seeks to bring together organisations representing or working with smallholder farmers, trade unions, informal workers, farm workers, working-class women, and NGOs to find common ground and collectively shift the food system policy landscape in South Africa towards a just transition, informed by research evidence and lived experience. Organisers were explicit that this workshop is meant to strengthen a dual track: policy advocacy feeding into grassroots organising, and grassroots organising rooting and legitimising the policy demands.

Workshop objectives

1. Prepare civil society and grassroots organisations to engage effectively with the NFNSP provincial consultations.
2. Build a shared framing and a common set of priorities for civil society and grassroots organisations to advance the right to food (including gender and climate justice).
3. Lay the basis for shared advocacy strategies and joint action beyond the NFNSP process itself.