KFC Africa launches Blueprint for Child Hunger Programme Globally

KFC Africa has taken the innovative step towards offering open access to 16-year-old Add Hope initiative, disclosing the operational blueprint behind a programme that has attracted R1.2 billion to address child hunger. The move, announced ahead of World Food Day on October 16, shows the first time a major South African corporation has made a successful social impact model publicly available for duplication and expansion.

The disclosure was made on October 7 at the Biggest Hunger Hack which took place at the University of Johannesburg, where 60 young innovators partnered to reinvent and improve the Add Hope programme. The hackathon encouraged participants to build upon the existing framework with fresh solutions that could maximize impact on both locally and internationally.

KFC Africa’s Head of Corporate Affairs, Andra Nel, explained the reasoning behind including younger generations in reshaping the initiative. Andra Nel stated that “They truly get it because they’ve lived or witnessed it. They also understand technology, community and systems thinking better than most. So we gave them our blueprint and challenged them to turn it into fresh solutions for even more hope.”

The ideas coming out of the hackathon impressed organizers with their innovation and implementation. Andra Nel described the concepts as inspiring and highlighted that sharing both the ideas and the underlying blueprint would help others to discover the recipe, adjust it to fit their context, and implement it across different regions. The timing matches perfectly with World Food Day’s 2025 theme of global partnership.

Add Hope operates through a simple yet effective model. KFC customers can choose to include R2 to their meal purchases, with the matching employee retirement savings contributions from its own funds. This partnership model reached a major achievement last year when cumulative donations passed the R1 billion threshold, made up of over R600 million from the public and R400 million from KFC itself.

More than 30 million nutritious meals is delivered to vulnerable children across South Africa.Apart from the immediate food relief, Add Hope also support youth development through this collaborative projects including Mini Cricket, which  made up of over 120,000 young players with 13,000 coaches, the Ikusasa Lethu scholarship programme, and the Streetwise Academy.

The founder of humanitarian organization Gift of the Givers, Dr Imtiaz Sooliman, shared a collective insight from disaster response work which showed how pervasive food scarcity truly affected communities. Dr Sooliman said “When you go to a disaster site, the first thing people ask for is food. That’s when you realise that hunger is not two hours old, it’s been there for days,” emphasizing on how hard times expose the cracks rather than creating new ones.

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