By Nomsa Muthaphuli

PRESIDENT Cyril Ramaphosa’s endorsement of collective efforts to ensure that every child in South Africa has access to quality early childhood development (ECD) programmes will quickly bear fruit across society.

“Studies have shown that every rand spent on early childhood education can save up to seven rand in future costs associated with remedial education, social services and criminal justice,” Ramaphosa said, addressing the Bana Pele 2030 Roadmap Leadership Summit in Johannesburg on March 17, 2025.

The government’s 2025/26 budget has yet to be voted into law, but the R10 billion it sets aside for ECD is an enormously welcome boon that will allow the daily subsidy for each child in a registered, state-sponsored ECD programme to increase from R17 to R24. It will also enable education authorities to bring an additional 700,000 children up to four years old into this subsidised early childhood education over the next three years. This will bring the total number of children on ECD subsidies to 1.5 million.

Strengthening Collaboration for a Better Future

The Oppenheimer Memorial Trust joined with the DBE, non-governmental organisations and other impact investors in the mass registration drive at its start, in June 2024. As the trust's ECD & Youth Fund manager, I have been seconded to the DBE to assist as a member of the drive’s project management unit. We are making steady progress towards our goal of registering more than 20,000 unregistered ECD programmes by December 2025, ensuring that they can access the subsidy.

Already, more than 9,300 applications (as of March 13, 2025) have been made since the Bana Pele pilot kicked off. In just a few months, more than 2,000 ECD programmes have been registered under the first phase, with the balance of sites under review.

Investing in ECD has immediate and long-term effects on society, improving school readiness and health outcomes for young children. As Ramaphosa noted on 17 March, the Act For Early Years campaign calculated that if South Africa invested 2.1% of GDP into universal childcare, it could support 10.5 million women’s entry into the workforce over three years. Imagine the change that would make to those women’s families and communities, and to the whole economy.

Until now South Africa’s ECD sector has been woefully neglected, with only 1.5% of our national education budget going to it in 2024/25 financial year. It is hugely encouraging that Ramaphosa admitted, at the summit, that the government’s lack of focus on ECD over the past 30 years was a mistake and that he undertook that the government is determined to rectify this omission.

We can already see that the government is serious. Basic Education Minister Siviwe Gwarube, speaking at the same event, said that her department wanted every child in South Africa to have access to quality ECD by 2030 – just five years away.

We at OMT are invigorated by this new enthusiasm for ECD from the government. We were thrilled to hear Gwarube say her department would be making a “strategic reorientation” towards foundational learning, including ECD.

There is much to be done, and OMT is ready to continue lending an experienced hand.

OMT believes strongly in data-driven decision-making and we are pleased that the government has started a regular study – the Thrive by Five index – to deliver an accurate picture of the quality of the ECD programmes it sponsors. We know where the gaps are and we can systematically address them.

The Bana Pele 2030 Roadmap Leadership Summit at which Ramaphosa and Gwarube spoke is a strong indicator of another positive development. It would not have happened if the government and the other players – including funders, NGOs, implementers and the private sector – had not already found each other in a meaningful (and frank) way.

Working together like never before

What this means is that instead of fragmented, ineffective efforts in which a lack of capacity and coordination leads to wasted funds and lost opportunities, we’re finally working together like we never have before.

This is a fundamental paradigm shift. A social compact has emerged, and I have never been more inspired or determined to help get the job done.

A crucial, and perhaps unprecedented, aspect of this social compact for ECD is how we collaborate. This time, the partners are expected not just to support government activities. We must also roll up our sleeves and go to work, helping the government with the human capacity it needs.

The 2021 Thrive by Five index shows that around 1.3 million three-to-five-year-olds are not in any form of early learning programme, and of children who are, only 45% are regarded as on track in terms of cognitive development. Children in the poorest 60% of homes, in particular, are falling far behind the standard expected for their age. Additionally, 5.7% of the children show signs of chronic malnutrition. (The 2024 study’s results have yet to be released.)

The ECD Census 2021 counted 42,420 ECD centres across South Africa, of which at least half were unregistered. It is likely that more exist and operate under the radar, missing out on oversight, support and funding.

Bana Pele (Setswana for, appropriately, “children first”) is a three-part initiative to regularise all of South Africa’s ECD programmes and then bring them up to the required standards.

At the heart of Bana Pele’s success to date is the government’s multi-pronged approach to registrations, including its eCares online registration portal, a call centre and registration support by NGOs. The pilot project showed that NGOs are best placed to give application support to ECD programmes, helping to build ECD practitioners’ trust in the application process.

The Role of the Private Sector in Scaling ECD

Much work – and a whole lot of funding – is still needed. For example, to effectively run the second, compliance-focused phase of Bana Pele, South Africa needs between R120 million and R150 million from the private sector. This will support infrastructure improvements and health and safety packs for an estimated 10,000 programmes.

An independent central infrastructure fund will be set up, where a body such as the Development Bank of Southern Africa will manage the monies on behalf of all the social compact funders.

This social compact will create high levels of collaboration among funders to ensure a large enough funding pool that accelerates support at sufficient scale and in a co-ordinated way. This also provides an opportunity to test how private money can leverage public investment.

To date, we have confirmed R30 million in funding towards this arrangement, with a potential R30 million in the pipeline. This leaves a shortfall of between R60 million and R90 million.

Bana Pele has demonstrated that when the government, civil society and private impact investors work together, pooling not just funding but also their various skills and expertise, meaningful progress can be made.

We need other private sector impact investors to join us, not only to provide money, but to share intellectual property, networks, skills and expertise for the transformation of ECD. This is how, once and for all, we can fulfil the potential – the promise – harboured in every child in South Africa, irrespective of who they are or where they grow up.

To get involved:

* Nomsa Muthaphuli is the ECD & Youth Fund manager at the Oppenheimer Memorial Trust