JOHANNESBURG, 5 February 2009 (IRIN) - Efforts to tackle joblessness among young people in South Africa, which has one of the world's highest youth unemployment rates, need to be scaled up, particularly as the economy slows down, according to policy analysts.

The government and the private sector have made several "well-meaning" interventions to address the problem, according to a report called 'South Africa's Door Knockers', by the Johannesburg-based Centre for Development and Enterprise (CDE), a policy think-tank, but these need to be reviewed to make them more effective.

South Africa's growth rate slowed from an average of around 5 percent for several years to 3.8 percent in 2008, making the creation of jobs, particularly for the youth, a major challenge - 65 percent of young people were unemployed in 2005. Analysts have put the unofficial overall unemployment rate in the country as high as 40 percent.

The report warned that the problem of youth unemployment extended far beyond the immediate crisis of individuals lacking a wage: longer-term national threats include political stability, the viability of the country's fiscal and social security systems, and the social integration of a non-productive generation.

What to do?

Tertiary education is regarded as the "silver bullet" that vastly improves young people's employment prospects: 94 percent of those with tertiary degrees had either found jobs or were continuing their studies, the CDE report noted.

But tertiary education in South Africa is expensive; moreover, inadequate education at the secondary level often prevents young people from pursuing a university education.

A unique university is attempting to address both problems. The privately funded Community and Individual Development Association (CIDA), founded in 1999 in Johannesburg, is run by students to keep costs down while providing free business-oriented tertiary education to poor students.

CIDA provides a preparatory "Foundation Year" to bridge the gap between township education levels and university readiness by upgrading mathematics, English, and basic accounting skills. It also focuses on improving students' confidence, life skills and creativity.

But, successful as CIDA's model is - 838 graduates to date - Rukudzo Murapa, the dean, calls its contribution to solving the problem of youth unemployment "modest".

The university, run entirely on corporate and private donations, can only accept a limited number of students: this year it will take 350, with 300 of them studying the foundation year curriculum.

The need for the foundation year raises questions about the quality of education in the country's poorer schools, and how those deficits affect students who do not make it into programmes like CIDA's.

With or without financial aid and a foundation year, most of the population is not qualified for, nor necessarily interested in, acquiring a tertiary degree. "The majority will be down there [without a degree] for years to come," Murapa noted. "The question is: how to make that level productive?"

The skills mismatch

"Our economy is just not generating jobs at the skills level at which the majority of the population is sitting. We've got a massive skills mismatch, and the youth are being affected by it the most," said Lance Greyling, a member of parliament for the Independent Democrats (ID), an opposition party.

A national drive to develop high-skill industries such as technology and banking, and a simultaneous loss of jobs in the agriculture and manufacturing sectors over the last 15 years, have resulted in the growth of high-skill jobs for which there is a lack of qualified applicants.

We are very concerned about the migration of productive young people from rural to urban areas, where they don't find jobs, yet deprive the rural areas of critical skills

"[After apartheid] one of the top priorities was changing the complexion [at the top]; to quickly train people to managerial and high-tech positions, but that did not really create jobs. We ended up recruiting people from our schools and hospitals, and creating a deficit in our education system," Murapa pointed out.

Greyling and the CDE both cited the importance of investing in government programmes, such as Further Education and Training (FET), which provides vocational and technical skills from Grades 10-12, and equivalent levels in FET colleges.

Fighting for resources: urban versus rural

Most poor South Africans live in rural areas and analysts argue that more investment and employment interventions should flow into small towns and villages.

The migration of young people from rural to urban centres often results in their being jobless in an unfamiliar place, where they may lack family networks and the cost of living is higher. "We are very concerned about the migration of productive young people from rural to urban areas, where they don't find jobs, yet deprive the rural areas of critical skills," said Murapa.

CIDA is trying to bring about change in rural areas with an urban initiative that requires students to participate in its community-based "Extranet" programme, which trains and mentors people in their home communities in social issues, including leadership skills, health and HIV/AIDS, money management, and entrepreneurship. The university estimated that by 2003, more than 500,000 youths across the country had benefited from this training.

Interventions that work

The Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP) is the only government effort to create jobs that is widely regarded as a clear, large-scale success. Under the Department of Public Works and the Department of Trade and Industry, the EPWP aimed to create one million short-term work opportunities between 2005 and 2009. By the end of the third quarter of 2007, it had created 845,506.

The programme covers sectors such as infrastructure, services, and has enterprise development elements, as well as initiatives in agriculture, co-operative income generation, and micro-enterprises.

One of the EPWP's poster-child programmes, "Working for Water", clears alien vegetation using labour-intensive methods, and has won numerous awards in conservation and public works. It employed nearly 30,000 people in the 2005/06 financial year, providing them with income and skills training. Young people filled at least 6,000 of the 30,000 short-term jobs.

Working for Water spawned Working for Wetlands, Working on Fire, and the recent Working for Energy programmes, all using labour-intensive methods to solve existing natural-resource related problems in a cost-effective manner, such as restoring wetlands, extinguishing wild fires, and creating renewable energy sources.

"Working for Water has an extraordinary return on investment," said Guy Preston, co-initiator of the model and the national programme leader. "The value of the water alone – particularly if you factor in what would happen if we don't do it – makes it come out ahead. It's already a cost-effective exercise, before you look at what it means for flooding, fire, the productive use of land, biodiversity, and tourism."

Preston reasoned that programmes dealing with environmental problems that would never disappear would also make them sustainable sources of employment.

The ID's Greyling agreed that new models for matching unemployment with serving the needs of the country were required. He cited the use of locally produced goods and labour to meet the needs of the numerous South Africans living without housing, good roads, and affordable electricity and water.

Self-help

The CDE report found that many young people believed the government should create jobs for them, and noted that this important misconception needed to be addressed swiftly.

Several initiatives to promote a culture of entrepreneurship and self-empowerment have been developed, including the government's Umsobomvu Youth Fund (UYF), and corporate-based collaborative initiatives like The Business Place, among others. However, none of these programmes have been assessed or reviewed to find out whether or how well they work.

The Business Place (TBP), which has walk-in advice centres around the country, provides a physical location where aspiring and emerging entrepreneurs can use free facilities such as the internet, computers and meeting rooms, and can network. Regardless of the client's level of preparedness, the philosophy is one of empowerment.

Clients can also take courses at a negligible cost in basic life skills, financial management, and how to start, run and grow a business. Most of the clients who come to TBP are between the ages of 18 and 35, some of whom have had business experience.

"Our thinking is to empower you as a business person to make decisions, and to break that cycle of dependency on an institution or person," said Lavendra Naidoo, head of the Cape Town branch. "A lot of people have not set very clear goals and objectives in timelines that they can measure; they talk in very abstract terms - 'I want a big factory' - so we ask questions to get them to come to their own conclusions about how to proceed."

TBP's model appears to be both sound and progressive, but is limited by capacity: until the end of 2008, the Cape Town branch's staff of seven was receiving between 1,200 and 1,400 clients every month.

The Umsobomvu Youth Fund was set up in 2001 with the mandate of promoting entrepreneurship, job creation, skills development, and skills transfer among South Africans between the ages of 18 and 35. The South African definition of youth extends to 35 so as to include more of those disadvantaged by apartheid.

The fund is now in the process of being merged with the National Youth Commission, and the two groups will be part of the newly created National Youth Development Agency, scheduled to begin operating in June 2009. Great hope rides on this new effort.

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