Supply Chains as Instruments of Nutritional Justice: Sustainable Supply Chain Management, Hidden Hunger, and the Imperative of Accelerated SDG 12.3 Delivery in Developing Economies

Hidden hunger, the clinically silent yet epidemiologically catastrophic deficiency of essential micronutrients, afflicts an estimated two billion people globally, with sub-Saharan Africa and other developing regions bearing a disproportionate burden. This article advances the argument that sustainable supply chain management (SSCM), as both a theoretical construct and an operational discipline, constitutes an underutilised yet structurally decisive lever for ameliorating micronutrient deficiency. Grounded in stakeholder theory, legitimacy theory, and the triple bottom line (TBL) framework, each explicitly deployed in both the conceptual and empirical sections of this article, this paper critically examines the architecture of food supply chains in developing economies, interrogating how systemic inefficiencies compound nutritional deprivation. The paper advances the argument that accelerated delivery of UN SDG Target 12.3 constitutes a first-order nutritional health intervention, not merely a waste-management prerogative.
Using South Africa as the primary case context, with comparative analysis extending to the African diaspora in high-income host nations and to successful cold-chain governance models in Kenya and Rwanda, the article proposes an integrated policy architecture. Critically, this revised analysis incorporates the gender dimensions of supply-chain nutritional failure, the political economy of smallholder integration, food sovereignty as a rights-based governance framework, and concrete monitoring and evaluation mechanisms. The article concludes that unless the SDG 12.3 delivery timeline is treated as a mandatory structural intervention, backed by binding legislation, gender-responsive policy design, and a transnational governance architecture, the intergenerational consequences for human capital, economic productivity, and public health across the Global South will be severe and irrecoverable.

sustainable supply chain management (SSCM), hidden hunger, micronutrient deficiency, SDG 12.3, food loss and waste (FLW), developing economies, South Africa

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