By Kulula Manona, Chief Director: Foundations for Learning, Department of Basic Education, Grace Matlhape, CEO, SmartStart, and Senzo Hlophe, Director of Partnerships for Impact, Ilifa Labantwana
In too many low- and middle-income countries, early childhood care and education (ECCE) remains underfunded, fragmented, and hard to access for the children who need it most. South Africa knows this challenge well. For too long, quality early learning has been out of reach for children in poorer communities, constrained by limited public funding, complex regulations, and a system that lacked the coordination to deliver at scale. But something significant is shifting. A new kind of partnership among government, civil society, and private philanthropy is laying the foundations for a system capable of delivering quality ECCE to all children in the country by 2030.
Societies increasingly understand investment in ECCE as one of the most effective ways to support long-term social and economic development. In a country shaped by deep structural inequality and high unemployment, this collective approach to universal early learning offers lessons for other low-resource settings and real opportunities to invest in transformative change. This investment gives children and families the foundation to thrive and fuels the women-led care economy, allowing caregivers to pursue livelihood opportunities while delivering essential services to their communities.
In South Africa, ECCE services are independently provided. The government subsidises access for children from low-income homes, but public funds have historically been limited, averaging just 2% of the annual basic education budget between 2014 and 2024. Overlapping and often unrealistic regulatory requirements have also constrained access to support for programmes operating in under-resourced contexts. According to the 2021 ECD Census, the country has approximately 42,420 ECCE programmes, yet just one third were receiving government support, subsidies, and oversight.
Addressing this would require more than policy ambition; it would take a collaborative effort from all ecosystem stakeholders. Local and international philanthropy have provided catalytic capital to enable public and private players to collaborate and build local evidence, testing models and laying the groundwork for change since 2012, when ECCE was included as part of a government plan to eliminate poverty, reduce unemployment, and lower inequality.
That commitment began to bear fruit in 2022, when South Africa’s Department of Basic Education (DBE) assumed responsibility for ECCE and set out a strategy to achieve universal access to quality early learning by 2030, prioritising vulnerable children and workforce development. The strategy is supported by a Shared Blueprint, an ambitious implementation guide published earlier this year, which recognises that the ECCE system can only be effective with strong, coordinated connections between government, the private sector, civil society, communities and practitioners. Together, these documents set out the roadmap to reach an additional 1.3 million children by 2030 while ensuring that expanded access translates into improved child outcomes.
To turn policy into action, the government and its partners have delivered concrete results. The Bana Pele Mass Registration Drive has brought 14,000 ECCE programmes into the regulatory net. A digital management information system, eCares, has revolutionised how the sector interfaces with government, enabling real-time data to drive planning and resourcing decisions. The ECCE workforce has been united under a ground-up movement for change and mobilised to participate in the government processes that shape how early learning is resourced and governed.
Civil society partners are simultaneously building the critical at-scale delivery systems that are needed to achieve quality access for children in all communities. This includes harnessing existing community assets, like local venues, networks, and the women already doing the work, and connecting the efforts of NGOs, local organisations and practitioners to enable the whole system, not just its formal structures, to work toward the same goal.
This whole-of-system approach is further strengthened by political will at the highest level and a genuine appetite for legal reform. In 2024, the DBE published amended legislation that will significantly lower the barriers to inclusion within ECCE regulatory and funding frameworks. South Africa’s 2024 Thrive by Five Index, the most comprehensive national survey of preschool child outcomes, itself a product of public-private partnership, found that 42% of children are on track in early learning. That means more than half of children still enter primary school at a learning disadvantage. The ecosystem is aiming to raise that figure to 48% by 2027 and 51% by 2030.
Financing for ECCE has increased significantly, reflecting growing confidence in the system. Major funder collaboratives have invested through civil society-led work. The National Treasury has committed R12.8 billion over the current budget cycle, extending reach to more children. An estimated 100,000 additional children were subsidised in the last financial year alone. A R496 million results-based financing initiative, the ECCE Outcomes Fund launched in December, is targeting improved quality and access for a further 115,000 children.
But more is needed. Estimates suggest that at least Rands 20 billion per year will be required to cover the operational costs of quality ECCE for all vulnerable children. The good news is that, for the first time, South Africa’s ECCE ecosystem is coherent, accountable, and shifting focus towards approaches rooted in enablement and progressive development, meeting programmes where they are and supporting them to improve over time. This primes the ecosystem to absorb further investment with confidence that it will reach the children and women who need it most.
Public-private partnerships offer immense opportunity for impact, but are inherently complex to design and sustain. In South Africa, the partners have brought diverse implementation capabilities, technical expertise, institutional mandates, and financing frameworks to the table and have remained committed to exponential change despite inevitable setbacks. The significant progress of recent years is a testament to the power of collaboration in solving complex problems.
If there is a broader lesson, it is this: meaningful systems change rarely starts at scale but with a committed set of partners who choose to work differently, and stay the course long enough for change to take root.