African governments should tie child grants and cash-transfer programmes to the actual cost of providing children with a nutritious diet, rather than setting support according to what public budgets can afford, Prof. Christine Taljaard-Krugell has argued.
Prof. Taljaard-Krugell, an associate professor at North-West University’s Centre of Excellence for Nutrition and a registered dietitian, says governments must tackle the economic and structural barriers that prevent families from turning nutritional advice into healthier meals.
She is calling for stronger implementation of existing food-fortification policies, particularly because poorer households often buy food from small local mills that fall outside industrial fortification systems.
The dietitian says governments should also expand the development of national dietary guidelines. According to the expert, only 12 African countries currently have such guidelines, despite their relatively low cost.
She further recommends greater action against aflatoxin contamination in maize and groundnuts. Although technologies capable of reducing contamination by more than 90% in field trials exist, adoption among farmers remains very low.
“The technology works and the delivery doesn’t,” she says. Prof. Taljaard-Krugell also believes that governments should reconsider blanket food VAT exemptions because wealthier households can capture a significant share of the benefit, while the savings do not necessarily translate into lower prices for consumers.
Social protection is another critical area. Child grants and cash transfers should be benchmarked against what households actually need to afford a nutritious diet, rather than “what the budget can spare”.
School feeding should also be expanded, particularly programmes that purchase food from local farmers. Such schemes can improve children’s diets while creating markets for small-scale producers.
However, school meals cannot solve early childhood malnutrition on their own. The number of African children receiving school meals rose from 66 million in 2022 to 87 million in 2024, but most programmes reach children at five or six years, well after the critical first 1,000 days of life.
The dietician says governments must move beyond telling parents what children should eat and address whether families have the money, time and access needed to provide it.
Prof. Taljaard-Krugell believes that effective nutrition policy must therefore combine sound advice with affordable food, stronger fortification systems, aflatoxin control, targeted social protection, practical dietary guidelines and better-designed school feeding programmes.
