28/08/2026
Ku Mamisa Swi Hlayisa Mali Ni Switirhisiwa.
Breastfeeding saves money and resources.
That was on a placard in Acornhoek yesterday. Not in a policy brief. On cardboard, held up by a community health worker, in her own language.
It is also, precisely, the economic case. Breastmilk is the one form of infant nutrition that costs a household nothing, needs no supply chain and cannot be priced out of reach. Where it is displaced, families absorb the cost, in formula, in clinic visits, in the long tail of undernutrition that follows a child into a classroom and out of it. In South Africa, only 22% of infants under six months are exclusively breastfed.
The Fund joined Well Being Africa, the Mpumalanga Department of Health and community partners to mark World Breastfeeding Week 2026 and its theme: Strengthen What Works. Shadi Nyokong, CSDT programme manager, represented the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund.
Three things we took from the day:
Exclusive breastfeeding is one of the highest-return investments available in the early years of a child's life.
Communities are not the audience for development work. They are the ones who identify what is wrong where they live, and who should determine how it is answered. Yesterday that answer arrived in Xitsonga, on a placard, unprompted.
And partnership means jointly owning the problem, not dividing up the credit.
This sits under Alleviation of Poverty in our new strategy, Legacy 2.0 Khuluma Mntwana Sikuzwe. Speak, child, so that we may hear you. It applies to the communities raising those children too.
