South Africa’s agriculture sector is a paradox. Despite contributing significantly to the economy and employing over 924 000 people, food insecurity at the household level is rising. Dawie Maree, head of information and marketing for agriculture at FNB Business, discusses food security challenges and solutions.
Despite its relatively small share of the total GDP (roughly 2.6%), agriculture is an important sector of the South African economy. The primary agricultural industry employed 924 000 people in 2024, making it the country’s largest employer by industry, with employment weighted towards rural areas.
Agriculture also makes up around 10% of our exports, with a record of $13.7 billion in 2024, and has a prominent indirect role in the economy as a purchaser of goods and supplier of raw materials for beneficiation. If you take these value-chain linkages into account, agriculture’s contribution to GDP is closer to 12-15%. But agriculture is more than a driver of economic growth; it feeds our country and supports our food security.
President Cyril Ramaphosa has made it clear that South Africa will use its presidency of the Group of 20 (G20) and hosting of the G20 and Business 20 (B20) forums in 2025 to articulate a set of aspirations for Africa and to seek collective solutions to the overlapping and mutually reinforcing crises facing the world.
One of these crises, which in many ways encapsulates the complexity and ramifications of a deeply interconnected world economy, which is currently being tested in an unprecedented way, is food security.
Food security cuts to the heart of many of the most pressing and contentious challenges facing the world today: climate change, trade, protectionism, land claims, water scarcity, technology, poverty, inequality, and moral imperatives in international relations.
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