Publication: Sunday Times
Author: Ravi Naidoo
Publish Date: 16 June 2024
South Africa is at a point of crisis and must not waste the opportunity to “up its game”. Due mainly to failing economic infrastructure and dysfunctional public schooling, levels of youth unemployment have reached unprecedented levels.
Unkindly, we are additionally forced to contend with a changing world of work, which puts an additional premium on experience and technology. For South Africa, after three decades of decidedly incoherent and mostly state-centric policies, it is evident that most of our recent progress emerged through effective partnerships between the State and the private sector.
There are encouraging signs that we could be coming out of the economic woods. The President’s July 2022 Energy Action Plan, which enabled more private sector wind and solar projects, facilitated a helpful energy surge, resulting in two months without any loadshedding. As factories and businesses now stay powered for longer, they can generate the much-needed revenue, taxes, and jobs that the country needs.
This move to private-public partnership was a brave decision taken by the President, against much political opposition, notably during a time of “Stage 6” loadshedding crisis. Because economic network infrastructure is catalytic, such a turnaround is highly impactful.
Like economic infrastructure, young people are also catalytic.
Indeed, as most people by now accept, the best way to future-proof the country is to prepare young people to manage that future. Getting work experience is an essential part of that preparation.
Hence, promoting youth employment is a critical concern for governments anywhere in the world. The challenge is worst in conditions of low-growth, and high unemployment puts young work-seekers at a particular disadvantage, as youth lack the experience to compete for scarce job opportunities. In South Africa, youth aged 15–24 years and 25–34 years continue to have the highest unemployment rates at 59.7% and 40.7% respectively.
In amongst those young people – most of whom do not have access to the resources and social networks of their more privileged peers – are many thousands of youth with high potential. We know, because we see YES alumni, after an initial year of work experience, quickly being valuable employees and even budding entrepreneurs.
And as companies see the impact those work experiences are having, corporate participation in YES has risen strongly. In 2021, as the worst of the pandemic was ending, YES had achieved about 14,000 youth “internships” sponsored entirely by the private sector. At that point, YES had already become the biggest 12-month, full-time, minimum wage internship programme in the country. In the year ended March 2024, YES created 37,000 internships, almost trebling the programme over just three years.
In addition, corporate participation has risen from about 1,100 sponsoring companies in 2021 to 1,750 in 2024, making it the largest such corporate-backed programme in the country.
YES was formed after the private sector (in the form of the CEO Initiative, comprising 150 of the most forward thinking companies) identified youth employment as South Africa’s critical development prerequisite.
The theory of change at work here is simple enough. We see talented youth from disadvantaged backgrounds as untapped economic potential. The high-potential youth in YES programmes go on to create careers and even job-creating businesses. The private companies themselves, which pay their salaries and supervise them, typically want to absorb as many of these young workers as they can afford. Our economic sectors, including renewables, retail, financial services and ICT, gain by having thousands of talented young people enter their workforce.
From our data of alumni, now over 145,000 young people, we can see 45% are employed by the end of their internships and 15% have set up businesses. This is high impact, considering that all these young people were unemployed when they joined YES.
The types of careers and enterprises being spawned through the YES programme are remarkable to see. The young South African who became a drone pilot and now owns a company undertaking international contracts – imagine where she could take herself and the country in five years’ time?
As a country we must stop seeing unemployed youth as a burden, but instead as an enormous opportunity. In an uncertain world, South Africa (particularly forward-thinking corporates and government alike) need to bet on a talent pipeline of South Africa’s youth and support them to become the “game changers” that we need for the future.