REDUCING youth unemployment in South Africa while boosting economic opportunities is key to the country’s trajectory, says the National Youth Development Agency (NYDA).
The local agency’s chief executive, Waseem Carrim, said in order to grow the economy key opportunities lay in efficient energy security, the release of spectrum to lower the cost of telecommunications, the ongoing pursuit of the localisation strategy and the implementation of the critical skills list.
But Carrim said the Presidential Youth Employment Intervention had already made several key interventions to help youth.
This included the opening of the National Pathway Management Network, SAYouth, the Department of Basic Education Teacher Assistant Programme, as well as the increased support to youth-owned enterprises and the opening of funding windows for the Innovation Fund, Skills Development on a Pay-for-Performance Model and the revitalised National Youth Service.
“The programme needs to have continued funding and partnership support to scale its initial successes. Ultimately, reducing youth unemployment will ensure a more hopeful and sustainable future for the country, which is achieving the vision of a South Africa where every young person has a place to go,” Carrim said.
The NYDA was established primarily to tackle challenges that faced the nation’s youth.
According to Statistics SA’s Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS) for the third quarter of last year, 3.4 million, or 33.5 percent, out of 10.2 million young people aged 15 to 24 were not in employment, education or training. The youth aged 15 to 24 and 25 to 34 recorded the highest unemployment rates at 66.5 percent and 43.8 percent, respectively.
Considering QLFS pre-Covid-19 data and recent data, it was clear that youth unemployment had worsened, Carrim said.
“South Africa’s youth unemployment was a crisis even before Covid-19. This is because South Africa’s unemployment is structural in nature, with the supply of the skills pipeline not being generated to support employment while (the economy) has not been growing over a prolonged period,” Carrim said.
He said South Africa also faced a massive dropout rate from basic education.
“A matric certificate is proven to provide a much higher success rate of employment. Parental involvement in a young person’s education has been shown to have positive benefits for educational attainment. This is even more important in South Africa’s public schooling system where teacher to student ratios mean that young people are often deprived of sufficient attention, which would allow them to succeed.
“Yet, often because of socio-economic conditions in South Africa where parents are single parents, or work long hours to be providers, young people lack parental involvement. The government has doubled its investments in education over the last 20 years. Despite this, challenges remain,” he said.
But alleviating this was the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS), which had increased the access to higher education and there was a growing body of evidence that the scheme had improved access to higher education.
An analysis of the period between 2005 and 2015 indicated that 91 percent of NSFAS student graduates had found employment. University graduates were at 95 percent, which was higher than TVET (technical and vocational education and training) graduates.
“The concerning data is that only 46 percent of NSFAS students graduate. Given the substantial financial investment and high employment absorption of NSFAS graduates, this graduation rate is disappointing.
“There is also a higher employment absorption for students who are from engineering, health professions and related clinical sciences, education and architecture and the built environment fields rather than for graduates from public management and services, social sciences and languages, linguistics and literature fields,” Carrim said.
Youth participation in entrepreneurship was also relatively small.
“South African total entrepreneurial activity in the 25 to 34-year age cohort was 9.2 percent, which was less than half the Africa average as well as considerably lower than the average for efficiency-driven economies (18 percent).
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