The purpose of the study was to review surveys and studies that have been done in the field of
food security in South Africa. The main objective of the study was to consolidate the data on
food security in South Africa so as to come up with a clear picture of the food security
situation in the country. The study also aimed at evaluating the different surveys and the
indicators that they used and hence assess if they were sufficient to give a clear picture on the
household food security situation.
An electronic search for studies that assessed the food security status of households in South
Africa was done. This included electronic databases namely, MEDLINE (PUBMED) and
EMBASE, along with specialist websites from both the Government and independent
research bodies and general search engines Google and Google scholar. For inclusion into the
review, studies or surveys should have had a sample that had a national representation and
conducted during the years of 1994 and 2013 and importantly assessed an aspect of food
security.
On reviewing studies done at national level, five sets of surveys namely the Income and
Expenditure Survey, General Household Survey, National Food Consumption Survey, a
Dietary diversity study and the South African Social Attitudes Survey were identified and
altogether they assessed food security using a pool of 8 indicators. Between 1995 and 2011,
the food insecurity prevalence estimates ranged between 9% and 80% depending on the study
or indicator of preference. However a general trend that showed that food insecurity was
decreasing in the country was shown albeit at different rates. These studies mainly focused on
the food access aspect of food security and hence neglected food utilization and food
availability; hence the studies were not sufficient to give a complete picture of food
insecurity. This is because all the studies have different methodologies, different samples and
sampling techniques and above all have assess different aspects of food security which are
bound to give different results. The main determinants of food insecurity deduced from the
surveys were income and the source of the income as well as high dependency ratios. Femaleheaded,
rural households and urban informal dwelling households were found to be more at
risk of food insecurity