By Ozzy Nel, CEO of SA Harvest
On 11 September, I will join Daily Maverick’s The Gathering 2026: Cities Edition in Cape Town for a discussion on a question that matters to every South African city:
Should business help fix and invest in our cities, and is there a meaningful return on that investment?
My view is that the conversation should start with what is already there. South Africa has more capacity, resources, skills and relationships than we often recognise. The challenge is how we connect them.
When we talk about the future of South Africa’s cities, we tend to talk about what we can see. Roads. Electricity. Water. Housing. Transport. Digital connectivity. All of these matter.
But there is another layer of infrastructure that determines whether a city works. It is less visible, harder to measure and often treated as someone else’s responsibility.
Food security. Early childhood development. Community organisations. School kitchens. Local food production. Logistics. Skills. The networks that connect people and resources.
Together, these form the social infrastructure that helps cities function. And we need to start treating social infrastructure as city infrastructure.
The assets behind social infrastructure in South Africa
Business cannot replace government. The government has the mandate and responsibility to provide public infrastructure and essential services. Business should not pretend otherwise.
But business also cannot stand outside the society in which it operates.
Every company sits within a network of assets and relationships. Vehicles move goods. Warehouses hold capacity. Technology generates data. People have skills. Supply chains create connections. Businesses have property, expertise and relationships that extend well beyond their balance sheets.
The food system already has people, equipment, logistics and capacity. The opportunity is to connect those assets more effectively.
Community organisations have something equally important: local knowledge, trust and proximity to the people that formal systems can struggle to reach. Universities have research, students and ideas. Logistics companies have capacity moving through the country every day.
The question is not simply what business can donate. It is what we already have, where it is sitting, and what could happen if we connected it differently.
In simple terms, South Africa is not always short of resources.
We are often short of connection.
Food makes this clear. Edible food can leave the commercial system because it is surplus, out of specification, affected by weather or no longer has a viable market. At the same time, communities are struggling to access enough nutritious food.
The food exists. The need exists. The challenge is often what happens in between.
That same logic applies to other forms of capacity. A refrigerated truck returning with spare capacity is an asset. Warehouse space that is sitting unused is an asset. Technical expertise that is not being used to solve a local problem is an asset. A university project that never leaves the campus is an asset waiting to be connected. A community organisation with trusted relationships is an asset.
Individually, these resources have value. Connected, they can become infrastructure.
Social infrastructure in practice
A food rescue relationship can create opportunities that go beyond food. This same approach underpins SA Harvest’s greenhouse projects, which bring food production, nutrition, education and skills development together at community and ECD sites.
During ongoing engagement with Tehillah Community Collaborative in Cape Town, a need for new mattresses was identified. SA Harvest could not provide them directly, but its existing relationship with the organisation helped connect Tehillah to partners who could. Furnmart introduced Tehillah to Restonic, which donated the mattresses, while Furnmart supplied mattress covers.
The important point is not the mattresses. It is the connection.
A partnership between Furnmart, Restonic, Tehillah Community Collaborative and SA Harvest shows what can happen when existing resources are connected.
Three businesses and a community organisation brought different resources to the same need. The opportunity was already there. The connections made it possible to respond.
A similar principle can be seen in the greenhouse projects. A greenhouse can produce vegetables, but when it is placed alongside an ECD centre, it can also support nutrition, learning, skills development and community participation.
At Missionvale Care Centre in Gqeberha, the greenhouse provides fresh vegetables for people living with chronic illness while creating training opportunities for unemployed young people. In Pondoland, the work with iThemba Kuluntu brings food production together with water, early childhood development and local skills.
An ECD learner and teacher harvest spinach at iThemba Kuluntu, connecting food production with early learning and nutrition.
The point is not the greenhouse. It is what happens when infrastructure is designed to serve more than one need.
The picture becomes clearer when we stop looking at these interventions in isolation.
Communities do not experience problems in isolation
We often separate hunger, unemployment, education, climate and waste into different categories. Communities do not.
A child arriving at school hungry is experiencing a food system problem that can affect learning. A community without reliable access to fresh food is experiencing a food and infrastructure problem. A young person without work may also be looking for skills, networks and a route into an economy that does not easily open its doors.
This is why social investment needs to become more connected.
The University of Pretoria’s UP-Cycled Food Experience offers a simple example. Surplus food became a learning opportunity. Students worked with food that might otherwise have been wasted and explored new products and business ideas.
A food waste problem became a learning opportunity. A university became part of the food system.
UP students turned rescued food into a gourmet meal, showing how surplus food can become a platform for learning, skills and innovation.
That is the value of connected infrastructure. One resource can serve more than one purpose when the right relationships exist around it.
Why social infrastructure is more than a building
We often think of infrastructure as something physical. A road. A bridge. A school. A warehouse.
But a building does not make a system work on its own.
A school needs teachers. A learner needs food. An early childhood centre needs people and resources. A community organisation needs reliable access to the systems that allow it to serve its community.
This matters when we think about food.
At Salt River High, the matric pass rate increased from 67% in 2023 to 78% in 2024 and 88.8% in 2025 while the school was working with SA Harvest.
Food did not produce those results on its own. The school’s leadership, teachers, learners, parents, volunteers and donors all played a role. But reliable food support can remove one barrier to learning.
At Salt River High, Buckets of Nutrition gave matric learners food and stationery support during exam preparation, helping remove one practical pressure while they focused on their studies.
That is what social infrastructure can do. It strengthens the conditions in which other systems can work.
Why data matters to social infrastructure
If we are going to connect assets at scale, we also need to know where they are, where they are going and what happens when they get there. That requires data.
Food rescue operations provide a useful example. Data can track rescued food, allocations, nutritional value and the organisations receiving it.
Data makes the journey visible, from rescued resource to community impact.
That visibility matters. It allows businesses to understand where their resources are going. It allows organisations to plan. It allows gaps to be identified and the system to be improved.
Good social investment should not disappear into a report once the cheque has been written.
We should be able to follow the resource. We should be able to see the connection. And we should be able to learn from the outcome.
This is where technology becomes part of social infrastructure too. Not because technology solves the problem, but because better information allows people and organisations to coordinate what they already have.
Rethinking business investment in cities
If business is going to invest in cities, the conversation cannot stop at what business gives. We also need to ask what business gains when the systems around it work better.
A truck that would otherwise return empty. Warehouse capacity that is sitting unused. Food that has no commercial market but still has value. Technical expertise that can solve a local problem. Research that can move from a university into a community. A business relationship that can introduce one organisation to another.
These are not necessarily new resources. Often, they are resources already moving through our economy that have not yet been connected to the right need.
That is the opportunity.
Government remains central. Business has a role. Civil society has a role. Universities have a role. Communities have a role.
The answer is not for one sector to do everything. It is to make the connections between them work better.
Cities are systems
A city is not simply a collection of buildings and roads. It is a network of people, resources, services and relationships.
When those connections work, a surplus truckload of food can become meals. A greenhouse can become a source of food, skills and learning. A community organisation can connect resources to people. A university project can turn surplus into knowledge and new ideas. A business relationship can unlock capacity that was already there.
This is what social infrastructure looks like in practice.
South Africa does not only need more infrastructure. We need to get more value from the infrastructure, resources and capabilities we already have.
So perhaps the better question for business is not:
What can we give?
It is:
What do we have that could be put to better use?
And then:
Who else needs it?
That is where social investment starts to become infrastructure. And that is where business can help cities work better.
If you believe in building stronger social infrastructure through collaboration, data and resource optimisation, consider supporting SA Harvest’s work to rescue food and connect communities.
Donate to SA Harvest.
This article forms part of a broader conversation about leadership, systems thinking and South Africa’s future. Learn more about
The Gathering 2026.