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Let’s not squander Africa’s youth dividend

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A graduate stands on a street corner begging for work
A graduate stands on a street corner begging for work

One of South Africa’s most pressing social issues is the depressingly high rate of economic exclusion of young people.

What has gone wrong with our morality that we can course along in business-as-usual style when so many of our young people are kept on the fringes of our economy?

We pride ourselves on being a caring nation. But what caring nation allows so many of its people to live on the sidelines of prosperity and economic wellbeing?

We also talk of Africa being blessed with a “youth dividend”, given its large number of young people. Yet, by countenancing this large-scale, ongoing economic exclusion of the youth, we are squandering this dividend.

My concern is that some proposals on labour market reform – aimed at opening up the economic space for young people – are based on such cold economic analyses that I am left feeling as though we are talking about objects, not people.

Some proposals, such as completely deregulating the labour market and allowing market forces to determine the price of labour, are in my view policy prescriptions without a human heart. I do not think we should go down that road if we treasure our young people.

Since the dawn of democracy, there have been laudable efforts to arrest the intractable youth-exclusion problem. These efforts are to be welcomed and applauded. However, we should continue to ask demanding questions about their scale and efficacy. Many of these initiatives are too small to help us confront the challenge at the scale it demands.

Secondly, we are mostly in the dark about how effective these efforts are in bringing young people into the economy, keeping them in, and helping them carve out meaningful and sustainable careers.

We need quality feedback on how these initiatives are doing. But more importantly, we need more large-scale and multifaceted interventions.

We should confront bureaucratic inertia that makes things move more quickly.

Crucially, though, we also need others, particularly the business sector, to do their utmost to increase the absorption of young people into gainful economic activity.

While the private sector cannot be forced to invest against its will, it is painful to know that in the face of such a pressing national problem, the private sector is, by some estimates, holding back on injecting about R600 billion into the economy. Just imagine what a difference investing such a magnitude of resources would make in growing the economy and creating opportunities for young people.

Such an investment is neither altruistic nor motivated by kind-heartedness; it is the sort of action that should legitimately be expected from a business sector that has a social conscience.

Government also needs to think of new ways of doing things. One area worth looking at is whether government should require all recipients of its funding – above a certain amount – to commit to taking young people into development programmes and employment. This should apply to government investment in initiatives such as the department of trade and industry’s Black Industrialist Programme and funding by entities such as the Industrial Development Corporation.

Young people too need to ask themselves some tough questions. For how long will they let others speak on their behalf, no matter how well meaning those voices may be? Young people should become agents that bring about the change they want to see. Young people need to consider whether allowing their development to be politicised serves or harms their collective interests.

The challenges marginalised young people confront are the same, regardless of political affiliation. It was heartbreaking to see the political paralysis that accompanied the appointment of the board of the National Youth Development Agency. Such political interference, even by a section of the youth itself, should be rejected by all – most of all by young people themselves – across political lines. If we don’t take all these steps, the economic inclusion of the youth will remain an elusive dream and we will continue to squander our so-called youth dividend.

Bukula is an independent economic development analyst and director of InclusionSA

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