Youth unemployment in South Africa: Challenges and solutions discussed at Y20 summit

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Participants at the Y20 summit at the Birchwood Hotel in Ekurhuleni deliberated on the challenges of joblessness among young people.
Image: SUPPLIED
The jobs crisis, its effects on young people and how to overcome it took centre stage at the five-day Y20 summit at the Birchwood Hotel in Ekurhuleni on Tuesday.
Under the theme, Rewriting the Rules: Youth Ecosystems Powering Inclusive Economic Growth, the summit heard that among the key challenges was a mismatch between supply and demand in the skills needed by the job market.
Farai Ntuli, Accenture Development Partnerships' Africa livelihoods and education lead, said a number of youth entering the job market do not have the skills wanted by employers.
She said a demand-led lens was required to tackle the challenge and not just train jobseekers for the sake of training.
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'We are not looking at high growth industries and jobs for the future,' Ntuli said.
In addition, she said there was the struggle with inclusive hiring, where companies only look at graduates from certain South African universities.
'How do we hire inclusively? Those are the critical barriers that the private sector has to deal with,' she said.
According to Ntuli, various sectors and initiatives tackling the youth jobs crisis were operating in silos.
'We have to be better at coordinating,' she said.
Ntuli warned that if the country is going to meet its goal of decreasing youth unemployment by 10 to 20 basis points in the next five years, there has to be improved efforts to listen to what young people want and coordinate accordingly, including non-government organisations, the government and the private sector.
Non-profit organisation Nka'Thuto co-founder and co-chief executive Thulile Khanyile said the focus should also be on the shrinking job market.
'We need jobs but we also need to create ways to find job creators,' she said, adding that the country was losing people with the character to create jobs.
Aisha Jackson, country manager at ALX South Africa, which empowers young people with in-demand digital skills and offers access to international degrees and entrepreneurial support, said the charitable organisation helps in getting a job and keeping it.
She suggested that there was a need to legitimise alternative pathways rather than university education.
UmkhoAI founder Botshelo Baloyi said an honest conversation was needed on how access to jobs is through connections, despite young people having the required skills and degrees.
'It's also about connections, we need to be honest about that,' she said. Baloyi added that young job seekers must follow the right people on social networking platforms and ask relevant questions.
A call has also been made for the decisions taken at the Y20 gathering to be a key part of the G20 Summit in November.
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