Publication: IOL News
Author: Ravi Naidoo
Photography: YES
AS business leaders, we’re acutely aware that national economies are like sports teams competing on the global stage. The critical requirement is to get your best players onto the pitch, and right now, South Africa’s high unemployment rate means that we are only playing with half the team.
The recent 11th edition of the risk report by the Institute of Risk Management highlights a key insight: South Africa needs to unlock its vast human capital potential and transition our people from dependence on government support. Having 28 million people dependent on social grants is unsustainable, and we urgently need to find a way of transitioning our young people from being mere spectators to active participants in the economy.
The recent embedding of the Youth Employment Service (YES) into the South African Renewable Energy Masterplan (SAREM) represents a groundbreaking approach to this challenge. SAREM doesn’t just mention youth participation – it explicitly incorporates YES as a key component of its skills development and inclusive employment strategy within the renewable energy and storage value chains.
SAREM requires that actual developments in the renewable energy sector link up with YES to ensure that young people are employed and gain experience in the sector. It sets a target to widen sector participation in YES, with specific indicators proposed to track the share of the sector participating in YES initiatives.
SAREM also recommends opening up opportunities for new youth-headed businesses, with YES playing a role in supporting these entrepreneurs and connecting them with established companies for supply chain diversification and enterprise development.
Furthermore, it identifies YES as part of its catalytic interventions, specifically under the pillar of skills and technology development.
The explicit inclusion of youth participation as a measurable requirement rather than a voluntary aspiration reflects Minister Parks Tau’s commitment to evidence-based policy development, leveraging proven private sector initiatives to achieve broader economic transformation goals. In this way, SAREM has created a blueprint for other sectoral masterplans that could reshape how the country integrates youth employment into economic policy.
In the past four years, YES has grown 28% a year on average, building the most comprehensive database on youth employment outcomes in the country. With 188,533+ youth jobs created to date, a contribution of over R11 billion in youth salaries, and 45% of alumni employed, YES has moved beyond being an experiment to become a proven talent pipeline for youth from disadvantaged backgrounds.
This evidence base is crucial. YES brings years of verified data on what works in youth employment: which programmes create sustainable pathways, how to measure authentic impact and why verification matters. This isn’t theoretical – it’s the practical science of youth employment policy that should inform all sectoral planning.
Beyond the data, YES offers something unique in the policy landscape: ready-to-implement infrastructure. Unlike programmes that require years of development, YES already operates at scale with 1,900+ corporate partner registrations, verification systems, impact tracking and established corporate partnerships.
While entirely funded by the private sector, YES is the co-creation of government, participating in the Presidential Youth Employment Initiative (PYEI) and enabled by the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition. YES is a good example of how a public-private partnership can be created to support transformation within a logical economic model.
Of course, it would be ideal if the economy was growing at 5% a year, but while the hoped-for economic reforms are being put in place, YES (and its peers within the PYEI) play a critical role in mobilising and capacitating talented youth to support future-facing sectors.
The automotive, tourism, digital services and manufacturing sectors represent the next critical frontiers. South Africa’s automotive sector, contributing nearly 5% to our GDP, is undergoing a historic transition to electric vehicles while grappling with global supply chain shifts. BMW’s hybrid X3 production in Rosslyn and the broader industry’s R13 billion investment, for instance, both signal a sector ready for transformation.
Similarly, the digital services sector – encompassing business process outsourcing and general global business services – positions South Africa to compete globally with India while leveraging our English proficiency, favourable time zones and strong financial services foundation.
Tourism, meanwhile, offers pathways that blend traditional hospitality with emerging digital skills in online booking, videography and destination marketing.
Each of these sectors would benefit from SAREM’s model: embedding verified youth employment as a core component of sectoral strategy, creating additional incentives for companies that participate, and ensuring measurable outcomes through established monitoring and evaluation systems.
As it currently stands, youth employment is treated as optional across most economic policy. Companies can choose to participate in YES for additional B-BBEE advancement but face no consequences for ignoring youth employment entirely. SAREM’s innovation lies in making youth employment participation a prerequisite for sectoral benefits, creating genuine incentives for comprehensive youth inclusion.
This shift – from optional to essential – represents more than policy reform. It’s an acknowledgement that youth unemployment isn’t just a social challenge but an economic emergency and fundamental business risk requiring a co-ordinated response across all growth sectors.
If the remaining sectoral masterplans adopted SAREM’s approach, the impact on job opportunities would be transformational. More importantly, it would create a national ecosystem where youth economic participation becomes integral to sectoral success rather than an afterthought.
The automotive sector’s transition to electric vehicles, digital services’ global expansion and tourism’s post-pandemic recovery all require new skills and fresh perspectives. Young South Africans entering these sectors through verified programmes bring energy, adaptability and technological fluency that established workforces often lack.
Whenever we talk about Africa’s long-term structural advantages, which can be realised if fundamentals are unlocked, key among them is that we have the world’s youngest population with a median age of 19 and the fastest growing workforce.
But the truth is that our young population is only a strength and an asset if we can cultivate it – otherwise they become a burden. This is a fundamental South African risk that requires immediate policy intervention.
South Africa cannot afford to waste another generation of young talent while treating these young people’s economic participation as optional. The choice is clear: accept that our development strategy excludes the very people who represent our economic future or embed youth employment as a policy priority across all sectors.
Talented but unemployed youth are the untapped potential South Africa must unlock. The more potential we put into the field, the more South Africa can achieve in a highly competitive and uncertain global economy.
(Ravi Naidoo is CEO of Youth Employment Service (YES). His views don't necessarily reflect those of the Sunday Tribune or Independent Newspapers)