Youth Employment: A crises or opportunity?

Creating employment for the youth – a critical challenge for the entire development ecosystem in South Africa

Youth unemployment a crisis across the African continent

Within the broader humanitarian ecosystem – there are many opportunities to contribute to sustainable development. And whilst the sustainable development goals provide neat categories of development themes – in almost all cases – the achievement of the goals, whether it is to end poverty, achieve zero hunger, or improve gender equality – is underpinned by finding employment.?Employment is the most direct way to move out of the perpetual cycle of poverty.?And whilst the rest of the world may focus on other challenges such as adapting to and mitigating the impact of climate change – in Africa - where more than 60% of the population is below the age of 25 – solving the youth unemployment crises is of critical importance.

#Unemployment is recognized as the single biggest cause of poverty in South Africa, with all the negative implications this has for a multi-dimensional range of social challenges. Some of these challenges include lack of adequate nutrition, poor health outcomes, poor education outcomes, and lack of access to decent living conditions. Unemployment has negative impacts also in relation to access to networks, social exclusion and self-esteem issues that can contribute to depression and a range of anti-social behaviours that negatively affect the wider community and economy.

Addressing youth unemployment

Vast amounts of resources and multiple solutions have been applied by many organisations to try and address youth unemployment. In addition, there seems to be no shortage of understanding of what led to the crises. And yet, no matter how many policies focus on youth unemployment; or amount of research conducted to identify critical and structural barriers to youth employment; or the number of stakeholders working hard at addressing youth unemployment through many multidisciplinary interventions, here we are – almost 80% of the total number of unemployed people in South Africa are youth.

In one way we are facing a bigger crisis – not because we have not tried to address youth unemployment, but rather because individually our efforts are too small, and our interventions are too ineffective and fragmented to address the enormity of the crises head on. We will never reduce youth unemployment, reaching tens nor hundreds of people at a time.?We need more than 5 million jobs per year over the next five years to make a real difference and for this we need large, multistakeholder, multidisciplinary interventions – that by its nature – will require large investment.

Existing pathways to youth employment

Most development practitioners will tell you that they are trying their best to channel resources to all sorts of youth development, empowerment and job creation initiatives.?In the graph below I share a pathway of typical program interventions and methodologies that have been applied and are directing the investments of many social and impact investors, grantmakers, donors and philanthropists – with varying degrees of success.?

One of the most obvious reasons why ‘job creation’, portfolios and programs for youth are not working, meaning - not making a dent in youth unemployment figures – is because the initiatives are simply too short, too small, too fragmented and too ineffective. But it is not for the lack of trying! For example:

• Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development: There have been many attempts to deliver enterprise development support services (including mentoring, finance, incubators) to young people as well as initiatives to strengthen linkages to value chains.?While there are successful programs, these are outnumbered by the plethora of examples which do not have the desired impact. This is because there is a disconnect between the types of enterprises being created, and the products and services required by the market. Attempts are now being made to focus on informal and township as well as rural businesses – but access to finance remains a challenge for entrepreneurs, especially the youth, which of course has a negative impact on using entrepreneurship and enterprise development as a viable route to income generation, employment and job creation.
• Work experience: Lack of experience presents a common barrier for young people to enter the labour market. Whilst large-scale programs – such as Youth Employment Service (YES) South Africa - a work readiness program, have merit, it still is not enough. YES set itself the target of 1 million jobs, yet after 5 years (and only 100?000 job opportunities later) we are yet to see this come into fruition. On top of which - there is not much support from the private sector to absorb these young people ?which renders the program unsustainable and unscalable.
• Matching young people to opportunities: Significant investments have been made into programs such as the Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator and SAYouth, which helps young people find and secure relevant, learning and earning opportunities. But it requires large public private partnerships and substantial ongoing funding, and the required impact is still not evident. And several factors play a role here, most prominently – access to opportunities in an economy that is not growing, and the private sector not recruiting nor employing in the current economic climate.
• Skills Development: Many corporate social investment programmes are aimed at ‘training and preparing’ artisans to become electricians or plumbers.?Or ‘providing skills development’ to baristas to work in coffee shops or ‘providing leadership and entrepreneurship awareness training’ to potential entrepreneurs’ to start waste recycling businesses. Worthy as it may seem – we will never create ‘employment opportunities’ for the millions of unemployed graduates and youth at 20 or even 1 000 opportunities at a time.?Especially if the training provided is not accredited or supported by job placement and recruitment functions.

For this reason then – when programmes like the Presidential Employment Stimulus Program and the Presidential Youth Employment Intervention are announced, everyone in the development sector takes notice.

A large-scale experiment to the benefit of all in the ecosystem

The Presidential Employment Stimulus Program has fascinated me over the past three years.?Why? Because it is multi-disciplinary, involving several government departments, a wide range of funders, a multitude of implementation partners and equally several development approaches across various sectors all aimed at solving the unemployment crises.?

This program was launched in 2020 as part of South Africa’s Economic Reconstruction and Recovery Plan, in response to the economic impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic. The program was designed to support a spectrum of opportunities, focusing on job creation through public employment; on job retention in vulnerable sectors; on direct support to livelihood strategies; as well as on fast-tracking high-impact employment enablers. So far, more than 1 200 000 work experiences and opportunities have been created by the program.

Whilst there are several individual programs (such as those focusing on subsistence farmers, creating work from waste, supporting graduates, small businesses as well as the creative sector – see a full list here - https://www.stateofthenation.gov.za/employment-stimulus-dashboard ) under this initiative, the following two programs are particularly noteworthy because of the size of impact created:

• The Basic Education Employment Initiative: This program, implemented by the Department of Basic Education, has placed over 850 000 young people as school assistants in more than 22?000 schools across the country since its inception in October 2022.?This includes 250 000 young people placed in 2023 – the last group of 100 000 starting on 2 May.?
• The Social Employment Initiative: This program implemented by the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition is aimed at supporting the Social and Solidarity Economy and focuses on supporting civil society organisations to create employment by building on the work so many of them already do; to enable community-driven solutions to local problems and building the strength and sustainability of development implementation capacities in communities in the process. This program is aimed at creating 50?000 temporary jobs, the participants are hired for a limited number of days at wages pegged at the national minimum wage. The Social Employment Fund (#SEF ) was designed to impart valuable work-culture behaviours, such as timeous attendance at work, team leading, maintaining financial prudence in spending monthly wages, facilitate further pathways to employment which include basic technical skills training that will contribute to an individual’s skills passport and increase the reach and sustainability of civil society organisations who tackle social problems at grassroots and community level.

The Social Employment Fund a valuable opportunity for job creation

More than 28 organisations were appointed in the first round, whilst the second round of organisations to be selected for this fund will be announced shortly. It is not possible to highlight and feature all the organisations that are part of the initiative in this article – but it is important to note the different types of approaches taken by the organisations highlighted (below) to skills development, work experiences, learning and employment creation as well as the vast array of sectors impacted (agriculture, waste management, food security, early childhood development, literacy, homebased care and gender based violence). For this reason, the impact of the social employment initiative is noteworthy for a number of reasons: It is ?in the uniqueness of the design of the programs, the fact that it is open to initiatives from communities, it is not prescriptive other than it must be work that serves the common good; the array and choice of implementation partners as well as the social value and impact created, for example:

1. The Learning Trust :?A capacitating grantmaker that supports early stage and community-based non-profits. Their focus is predominantly on after-school care programs. 3?339 participants were placed in 96 worksites throughout the country. Their program not only provided a learning opportunity but gave participants insight into the field of education as an employment opportunity.
2. Solidaridad Southern Africa : An international civil society organisation focusing on making communities more resilient.?They work predominantly with smallholder farmers, finding modern means of allowing them to earn a decent income. Local hawkers and traders buy produce from these farms at cheap price points which are passed on to the community.?1 072 participants were placed in 90 smallholder and community farms in Gauteng, North West and Eastern Cape which allowed smallholder farmers to improve their productivity and income.?These individuals learned important technical skills as well as how to grow and look after their own food gardens which encourages localized food security.
3. Seriti Institute (NPC) : Seriti is a nonprofit development facilitation agency and public benefit organisation that provides technical support, project management and implementation, facilitates learning and promotes civic-driven change. The Work.Learn.Grow. initiative is a community farming and agribusiness initiative for low-income communities.?It provides inputs and agroecology training, designed to strengthen local participation and skills while establishing food gardens.?400 participants not only started their own small enterprises but also created new products, gained practical and organisational skills that create direct and indirect opportunities for market-based activities, as well as social and environmental outcomes.
4. Impande : Provides a range of support to improve ECD practice which results in improved school readiness.?Work was provided for 980 ECD teachers from 550 existing community driven, unregistered ECD centers through steady, stable income to these teachers.
5. Siyakholwa Development Foundation : A public benefit organisation that enables and empowers communities in the Eastern Cape and Gauteng through food security and early childhood development. Through the Social Employment Fund they employed not only thousands of youth as teachers assistants, home-based care givers, sports coaches and mentors but they also scaled their own operations and existing programs.
6. Small Projects Foundation : A community development and training trust that works in the Eastern Cape.?Their program focused on addressing health and educational challenges and more than 2?000 people benefitted from the program.
7. Lima Rural Development Foundation : A non-profit and non-governmental organisation that provides integrated rural development services. Their program provided education, physical and emotional support to new mothers whilst also ensuring the health and safety of newborn babies. The program included 5?700 youths in four provinces.
8. Goedgedacht Trust : Focuses on rural and community development. Their program focused on regenerative and organic food security initiatives, as well as ECD interventions and clearing of alien vegetation. It involved youth from the Western and Northern Cape and more than 2?000 youths participated.
9. The Impact Catalyst : A collective collaborative that focuses on regional development through partnerships.?Through their program 4?120 participants were trained to identify and remove bush encroachment and alien vegetation species, water sources and infrastructure were repaired and maintained, and soil was rehabilitated.
10. Hlanganisa Community Fund for Social & Gender Justice : Focusing on prioritising, supporting and strengthening community led interventions against gender-based violence.?This program employed 2?500 women as community-based paralegals to promote access to justice for women survivors of GBV across 4 provinces.?
11. The Nal'ibali Trust is a national reading campaign: It builds literacy skills and lifelong reading cultures in homes, schools and communities.?Under this program, 1?065 people from 7 provinces were employed to run a family and community literacy programs, improving reading habits and literacy skills.
12. Brownie Points : Is a social enterprise that leverages digital platforms and networks to empower, track and celebrate good deeds.?It facilitates fundraising and volunteering.?This program partnered with nine NGOs across South Africa to provide technical services, program management and monitoring and evaluation.?This program employed 1 175 people to assist organisations from the ECD, Education, Food Security, Health Care and Environmental sectors with data-free dashboards to track their progress and access additional resources.?

Lessons and insights from large scale programs

Through the Social Employment Fund South Africa has not only tested a wide range of approaches and interventions, reached the most remote and marginalised communities, but also showed what it takes to create large scale impact and social value – in addition to solve one of the biggest challenges on the continent, namely unemployment.

Critically, it is important that we take on board not only some of the innovative design features and unique aspects of the Social Employment Fund, but take note of the insights and lessons learned, which includes:

1. Strategic Implementation Partnerships – created a hub and spoke model specifically to create cooperative and collaborative implementation through a range of implementing partners. More capacitated implementation partners work with and onboard smaller more community-based organisations. In this regard much can be learned by grantmakers, philanthropists and social investors – that you need capacity to work at scale.?Not only did this approach ensure quality and detailed program management, with administrative efficiencies, but it also ensured that even the smallest grassroots organisations could be part of something bigger.
2. Big budgets are required for big impact goals – During phase 1 of the Employment Stimulus Program (2020) R12.6 billion was spent; during phase 2 (2021) ?R11 billion was allocated. In phase 3 (2022) R9 billion was allocated, with another R9 billion to be allocated until the program concludes in 2024. This means that collaboration and co-funding is required on a large scale, over a long period, ?also considering that finance is required for planning, design, research, engagement – meaning there needs to be enough funding to create a planning runway, something that funders will have to recognize and consider. For donors, grantmakers, philanthropists, social and impact investors this means public-private partnerships are essential and funders need to do extensive research to find who else is working on the same type of programs and/or funding similar work.?In addition, the time has come to create networks of networks – so that lessons learned can be shared, resources can be leveraged, and partners can build on the work already done. For example, donors can augment the number of jobs or focus on the quality of outcomes by supporting some of the supplementary costs i.e., the core implementation and administration costs in addition to program costs, provide funds for training, similarly a real need is to strengthen the institutional capabilities particularly of the smaller partner organisations.
3. We need to share our insights and resources – we cannot afford to make the same mistakes again and again, for this reason we need to conduct impact assessments, share our evaluation outcomes – and publish research and case studies.?Furthermore, we need to benchmark and compare our work – development does not happen in isolation, some programs deliver better results than others – and we need to be honest about which programs don’t work. And as we share our research and insights – we need to share our resources.?There is absolutely no need that every funder creates their own (new) initiative.?We also need to have a hand-over strategy where we fund different stages of development – from work experience, to work readiness, to employment.
4. Don’t underestimate what it takes to get people into employment. For more than 75% of the participants, this program provided their very first opportunity to work and many of the participants came from deep rural areas – where there is no opportunity for any employment. A key question is how support needs to be layered – what complementary interventions are needed to keep young people on a pathway out of poverty? In a labour market in which there simply aren’t many jobs, this work experience is also not a silver bullet. Scale, additionality, adaptability, flexibility, partnerships, quality of outcomes, efficiency – are measurable targets and indicators that indicate what it takes to solve youth unemployment. We need to interrogate each other’s work and think how we exit programs or handover to the next funder to take up the next layer of development.
5. Technological innovation and usage - played an incredibly important role in the delivery of the programs.?Again, an aspect and feature that many philanthropists and social investors will have to consider in their own programs and funding strategies as well. Much more focus should be placed on capacitating and funding technology for implementing partners – to enable them to work across geographic areas with large amounts of data to be collected as well as providing opportunities for ongoing learning and development.?Technology should not be thought of as just part of program design but should be part of implementation, capacity development and performance management activities.
6. Overall, we must set our targets much higher – we must have stretch goals when we focus on solving unemployment: In addition, there must be multiple layers of impact. It is not just about being employed or an opportunity to earn an income: In this regard, the real value of programs such as the Social Employment Fund lies in the other impacts created by the program, and these include aspects such as:

• Learning forums were created – Communities of practice (such as the Social Employment Network) have now been created where implementing organisations, grassroot organisations, funders and others can network, share and learn from the experience.
• Blended financial models were tested – in some cases – additional funding was required by the implementing partners – and this was sourced from a range of funders on the premise that there was income generated through management fees therefore funds could also be matched.?In addition, a new youth enterprise fund was created based on the success of the program, the involvement of the participants and the collaboration between the partnerships.
• Innovation through development practice – New recycling options are being tested, new revenue generating opportunities were explored, new delivery models were tested, and new communities of practice were formed around specific topics dealing with practical issues in community waste management, improving waste management outcomes, strengthening livelihoods and creating jobs in waste value chains.
• A stimulus to local economies and wider job creation - Across the program, the incomes earned by participants and beneficiaries of the program were spent in every local economy across the country – mostly in townships and rural economies. Beneficiaries directly supported small enterprise and the informal sector, trickling up into the wider economy from there. Of course, this supported market recovery by boosting demand with the goods purchased and the program therefore fulfilled its promise as part of the rebuilding and recovery of South Africa’s economy. For this reason, funders, donors and grantmakers will do good if they also measure the wider social, economic and environmental impacts of their job creation programs.

In conclusion

There is much to be proud of because of the Social Employment Fund.?For the first time we have a large, coordinated, integrated, multifocal, multidisciplinary program that is testing the effectiveness, efficiency and scalability of the broader humanitarian and development sector.?It has been – and still is - a steep learning curve for most of the organisations – but if we do not test these types of public private partnerships, if we don’t become part of it, if we don’t share the learning and insights and if we now don’t leverage on what has now been built – we would have wasted a very valuable opportunity to create jobs and employment opportunities for the youth.

My call to action is simple:

1. If you are a funder, donor, grantmaker, social and impact investor – build on the momentum that has now been created. Fund the organisations and programs that are part of the initiative – provide the next layer of support. Also, take advantage of the fact that core programme costs are covered with support that can take impacts to the next level and strengthen the sustainability of the organisations. Currently the Social Employment Fund requirement is that 80% of funds go to wages which leaves very little for crucial components such as capacity building, implementation, administrative, technology and training costs, and this is where you can leverage your resources to increase the duration, scale and scope of the impact.
2. If you are a development practitioner - that wants to create jobs in rural or township economies, the green, creative or social economies, combine impact by addressing gender-based violence with job creation, or provide bursaries for the youth that have now discovered new career paths or just read the case studies, research and impact reports of the program so that you can better your own development practices, reach out to the participants in the program.

Finally, my sincerest thank you, respect and admiration to Kate Philip – the program lead and Bhavanesh Parbhoo from the IDC - who invited me to participate in the partners meeting where some of the impact and results of the Presidential Employment Stimulus program were shared and that also served as the inspiration for this article.??

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