Beyond the Basket: South Africans already know inflation is worse than the numbers say. It’s time the data caught up.
Households are not buying less because prices have fallen. They are buying less because they cannot afford to buy more.
By Jed da Silva
South Africans don’t need a quarterly report to feel the cost-of-living crisis. They feel it at the till. The question is why our data systems are still catching up months after households have already adapted, and what we lose in that delay.
South Africa’s official Consumer Price Index averaged 3.2% in 2025, the lowest rate in 21 years. On paper, that suggests relief. In practice, it obscures a more troubling signal. When you look at what consumers are actually putting in their baskets, not just how prices are moving in aggregate, but what households are choosing to buy or quietly leaving on the shelf, the picture becomes far less reassuring.
Households are not buying less because prices have fallen. They are buying less because they cannot afford to buy more.
That gap (between what the headline number says and what behaviour reveals) is the real story.
The blind spot in our economic lens
Traditional inflation metrics are structurally backward-looking. By the time CPI data is published, households have already made their adjustments: switching brands, splitting purchases across cheaper stores, quietly removing items from the basket altogether. The statistic confirms what families have already lived through.
The problem is compounded by where our data comes from and how frequently it is updated and shared. South Africa’s formal retail sector accounts for roughly 57% of FMCG sales by value. The remaining 43% flows through informal traders, township spaza shops, and neighbourhood convenience stores. Yet the transactions in those environments are almost entirely invisible to the datasets used to guide policy and business decisions.
This is not a minor data gap. The informal FMCG trade was valued at R207 billion by the end of 2024, and spaza shops outgrew supermarket chains in 2025. We are making decisions about the consumer economy while blind to nearly half of where South Africans actually spend.
What real-time data reveals
When you look across the full retail landscape (formal and informal), the picture sharpens considerably. Consumers are fragmenting their purchases across multiple retailers to chase price differences. Entire product categories are quietly disappearing from baskets. Brand loyalty is collapsing under financial pressure. And these shifts are happening in weeks, not quarters.
The FNB/BER Consumer Confidence Index dropped to -13 in Q3 2025, and a separate study found 42% of South Africans are constantly worried about their finances, with 29% reporting that money stress is harming their mental health. These are not abstract economic signals. They are a population under sustained pressure, and our measurement systems are far too slow to respond in time.
Fintech offers a realistic, real-time economic buffer
This is where the conversation needs to shift. Financial technology is too often discussed in terms of convenience. Its more powerful, and rather underutilised role, is that of a real-time economic buffer. South African consumers completed over 118 card transactions per person in 2025, with total card volume reaching R2.9 trillion. The data infrastructure exists; what’s missing is the will to use it as a tool for household resilience, not just commercial insight.
Retail-agnostic data systems, used across formal and informal societal segments, can detect financial stress as it emerges, not months after the fact. That real-time visibility creates an opportunity: fintech platforms can return immediate value to consumers through micro-rewards, airtime, or digital incentives linked to everyday purchases, precisely when household budgets are under the most pressure.
At scale, these small buffers matter enormously. In emerging markets, resilience is built on thin margins, and when those margins disappear, vulnerability to economic shocks rises sharply.
The opportunity South Africa cannot afford to miss
South Africa has a rare combination of assets: a sophisticated fintech ecosystem, a highly diverse retail landscape, and widespread mobile adoption. That combination positions us to pioneer models and technical solutions where consumer data and financial value can actually interact in real time. This would help us bridge the gap between informal and formal retail: enabling faster, more targeted responses to consumers under economic stress.
The future of financial inclusion will not be built on lagging indicators. It will be built on systems that see what is happening now and act on it. The data is already there, in every receipt, every basket, every purchase quietly removed from a shopping list.
We just need to start listening to it in real time.
Jed da Silva is a technology entrepreneur focused on consumer apps combining entertainment, rewards, and data-driven engagement.
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