More than a quarter of South African children under five are stunted. Poverty, food insecurity, rising food prices and patchy access to basic services all feed into it. Stunting isn't just about height. It affects how a child's brain develops, their immune system and their chances of doing well at school and beyond.
That's why South Africa now has a national mission to end stunting by 2030. And it's a mission, not a single intervention, because no single intervention was ever going to fix something this layered.
In a recent DGMT podcast, Liezel Engelbrecht, Nutrition Lead for the Hold My Hand Accelerator, and Armaan Ujra, DGMT's Innovation Director for early childhood development, unpack why stunting has to be treated as a societal issue rather than an individual one. Their conversation makes the case for a coordinated, mission-driven response: one that pulls in government, communities, health services and families together, rather than leaving any one sector to carry it alone.
This is where Hold My Hand's work lives. From birth, brain development depends on love, nutritious food and safety in equal measure – and closing the food gap for young children is one of our catalytic priorities. Ending stunting means getting the basics right, consistently, for every child, everywhere.
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