Matching South Africa’s youth and women to life-changing opportunities
Unemployment in South Africa is at an all-time high, peaking at 46.6% in the third quarter of 2021 if we also include people who were available for work but not looking for a job. The country’s labour market is particularly unfavourable to women, whose unemployment rates are higher and tend to be confined to low-paying traditional female occupations.
To help marginalised youth find earning opportunities and support for their side hustles, and access free education content, Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator — part of the Skills for Prosperity (S4P) programme — and the South African Government developed the SA Youth network, alongside other partners. Launched in 2021 as part of the Presidential Youth Employment Intervention, SA Youth allows young people between 18 and 34 who register on the free-to-use mobi-site to access skills development and job opportunities and be matched to relevant ones.
Breaking down barriers to youth employment
Affordability is a key obstacle to employment for disadvantaged groups as travelling to the workplace can be costly. If an opportunity is close enough, the application process is either designed to filter out candidates who don’t “know the game”, or it’s unclear due to bureaucratic jargon. It can also require high-priced internet, printing, mailing, certifying or even travelling for multiple interviews.
Even if applicants manage to get an interview, they are unlikely to have enough experience to succeed. And yet they keep trying, using money intended for food and shelter to instead print CVs that will never be considered, or travelling to apply door-to-door, which is inefficient.
Just like these promising young people are often invisible to employers, comprehensive information on available and relevant opportunities is often invisible to them. Wasting time, resources and energies looking for it can be demotivating, which might lead to youth becoming disengaged and turning to the social ills of crime, drugs or violence.
SA Youth addresses all these barriers. It is a zero-rated, free-to-use website that can be accessed through multiple devices, such as phones and laptops. It also includes a toll-free support line, which ensures that every young person, no matter where they live or their circumstances, has a place to go for information and support. By aggregating learning and earning opportunities from as many partners as possible in the private sector, government, and civil society in a single place and for free, SA Youth ensures that millions of unemployed young work-seekers can easily access credible information and links them to the right opportunities. So far, the SA Youth platform has connected users to 589,000 earning and learning opportunities.
Advancing women’s empowerment
While promoting youth employment, SA Youth is also helping to dispel gender stereotypes, showing that women can perform jobs from which they have been typically excluded.
Thirty-year-old Lulama Ntsinde is one of the over 2.3 million young people who have been supported by SA Youth. When she saw on the network the opportunity to join a three-year plumbing internship programme run by S4P partner BluLever Education, she took it with both hands.
“I was running a small baking business, baking scones and biscuits to sell to the community around my neighbourhood, just for a small fee and to keep myself busy,” says the mother of three, who lives in Bekkersdal, a small community in Johannesburg’s West Rand, formed initially due to its proximity to local gold mines. “I’ve always been good with my hands. I’ve always been handy in the house in fixing leaks and maybe trying to fix toilet bowls, so I saw this as an opportunity to do something with that. My husband works as an electrical aide at one of the mines. He was very excited when I told him about the opportunity, and he gave me the go-ahead and the thumbs up, and he told me that I have his full support.”
Out of over 500 applicants, Lulama was only one of 42 who made it to the programme’s eight-week induction Leadership Base Camp. As part of the scheme, she will spend three months in the classroom and nine months in the workplace every year, which will ultimately result in a Red Seal qualification that allows plumbers to work independently.
“When I made the selection process all the way to leadership camp, my kids were so excited,” says Lulama. “ ‘Yay, Mummy, you finally found something you are going to do, and you are going to be a plumber’, which is something that they are not familiar with. But I get to talk to them and tell them what I’m learning. They can’t wait to carry my work bag or my personal protective equipment and keep saying that mummy is finally going to work.”
Lulama, who is currently completing her first round of on-the-job training, will be the first female plumber in her family. She’s also the only woman at her place of work. She is learning by supporting the team, which includes a lot of tool work, basic maintenance, and even some admin work and communication with clients. She is also digging trenches, climbing ladders and carrying geysers — on rainy days and very hot ones.
“As women, we are capable of this, and we will showcase that we are very strong in doing this and we are determined in doing this,” she says. “Growing up, I never thought I would be a plumbing trainee but it’s very cool and I have no regrets in making this career choice. I’m here with the specific goal of being a plumber, and this opportunity is getting me a step closer to my goal and getting me a step closer to achieving my bigger picture, while also helping create a path for women who will come after, and saving our greatest natural resource, water.”
