Almost 80% of the 9.5 million public school children receive at least one free meal a day through the National School Nutrition Programme. Initiated under President Nelson Mandela, the programme aims to improve school attendance and academic performance. The R10 billion a year programme targets learners in the poorest schools (quintile 1, 2 and 3), which the Department of Basic Education categorises based on the community’s socio-economic status.
The chart shows the percentage of learners in each province who are fed through the programme. In the poorer, more rural provinces, such as Limpopo, the Eastern Cape, Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Natal, more than 80% of learners receive a free meal. The proportion is much lower in Gauteng and the Western Cape.
This mirrors the share of quintile 1 -3 schools in provinces. The majority in Limpopo (97%), Eastern Cape (96%), KwaZulu-Natal (88%), Free State (84%), Mpumalanga (77%) and Northern Cape (74%) are in the three poorest quintiles, compared with less than half in Gauteng (43%) and Western Cape (44%). Quintile 4 and 5 schools are in the least poor areas.
These percentages mask the actual numbers of children on the programme. KwaZulu-Natal alone has 2.1 million, the most of all the provinces, followed by Limpopo (1.7 million) and Eastern Cape (1.6 million).
The surprise is that even though Gauteng has one of the lowest proportions of learners on the programme at 1.2 million, it is fourth-highest in number terms. It is the most populous province. But it’s also the wealthiest. The higher proportion of quintile 4 and 5 schools masks the large number of children who attend schools in the lower quintiles. The Western Cape has 540,000 learners on the programme, the second-lowest number after the Northern Cape.
The chart also shows that the share of learners has increased since 2009 from 63% to 78% in 2025. Driven largely by expansion into high schools, national coverage grew from 63% in 2009 to 78% in 2025.