Fast-food giant shares model behind 41 million meals a year ahead of World Food Day
KFC Africa is lifting the lid on the simple idea that has helped it deliver millions of meals to hungry children in the hope others will copy it.
Its Add Hope programme, launched in South Africa in 2009, invites customers to add just R2 (around 9p) to their order. KFC matches the donation, and together that small change pays for a child’s meal.
Over 16 years, those micro-donations have added up to more than R1.2 billion (about £52 million), funding 80,000 meals every day through local charities. Now, ahead of World Food Day, KFC has made the entire blueprint public so other organisations can use the model to fight food insecurity around the world.
This simple mechanism, combined with Add Hope’s governance and administration model, has proven remarkably sustainable, generating consistent funding streams while maintaining transparency and accountability that keeps donors engaged year after year.
Proven model now available globally
“For 16 years, we’ve been refining a model that works,” says Andra Nel, head of corporate affairs at KFC Africa. “We’ve tested it, scaled it and proven its sustainability. But one organisation can only achieve so much and we believe that the future will be one with a collaborative approach.
“By making our entire playbook freely available, we’re hoping to accelerate progress against child hunger globally as well as in South Africa.”
The Add Hope blueprint includes detailed frameworks for:
- Customer engagement and micro-donation systems.
- Selection of beneficiary partners and relationship management.
- Transparent funds allocation and impact measurement.
- Community-level implementation through local organisations.
- Sustainable long-term operational structures.
The decision to open-source the model represents a significant departure from conventional corporate practice, where successful social impact programmes are typically seen as competitive advantages, to a more collaborative effort.
Data-driven impact
The programme’s 16-year track record demonstrates measurable outcomes:
- R1.2 billion raised through small, voluntary customer donations.
- 41 million meals served in 2024.
- 154,770 children reached in 2024.
- 128 beneficiary partnerships.
- 3,323 feeding centres throughout South Africa.
- Consistent year-on-year growth in reach and impact.
An impact assessment in 2024 said Add Hope, South Africa’s biggest corporate feeding scheme, had left an indelible mark on the lives of millions and become a powerful force for good.
The model’s effectiveness lies in its simplicity and its integration of numerous partners. Customers provide funding, KFC manages the infrastructure and accountability systems, and established community organisations prepare and serve meals to children they identify as being vulnerable.
Whole-of-society response to hunger crisis
The initiative, in the run-up to World Food Day on 16 October, comes as food insecurity reaches critical levels globally. The World Food Programme says 319 million people are living with acute hunger and warns that children are the worst affected, with long-term consequences for their physical and mental development.
In South Africa, the UN Children’s Fund reports that one in four children live in severe food poverty, and the government estimates that more than 1,000 children die from malnutrition annually despite existing interventions.
“Individual feeding programmes, however well-intentioned, cannot solve a crisis of this magnitude,” says Nel. “We need coordinated whole-of-society responses, and that requires sharing knowledge, resources and proven methodologies.”
A multi-sector task team has been established to develop the hackathon insights into implementable collaborative programmes and to encourage adoption of the Add Hope model by other organisations.
Global replication potential
While designed for the South African context, the Add Hope framework addresses challenges common to child hunger initiatives worldwide:
- Sustainable funding mechanisms that don’t rely solely on corporate budgets.
- Transparent accountability that maintains donor trust.
- Local implementation that respects community knowledge and relationships.
- Scalable structures that can grow from single locations to national networks.
The complete Add Hope playbook is now available for download, providing organisations globally with access to operational templates, partnership frameworks, impact measurement tools and implementation guides.
Nel says Add Hope demonstrates what is possible when corporate philanthropy is designed for the long term. “Sixteen years of consistent impact proves this isn’t a marketing exercise – it’s a genuine commitment to solving a problem that affects millions of children,” she says.
“We’re hoping other organisations will take what we’ve learned, adapt it to their contexts and improve upon it or better yet, collaborate with us so that we can make a greater impact together. If we can inspire even a handful of similar programmes globally, we’ll multiply our impact many times over. That’s worth more than keeping our playbook to ourselves.”
