​Youth unemployment in South Africa remains a serious cause for concern, with 2021 Statistics revealing that about 64.18% of the youth aged 15 to 34 years are unemployed.
Despite many efforts by the government and the business sector, youth unemployment remains at its peak high.

According to a study by the National Research Foundation (NRF), youth unemployment is largely driven by lack of education, with the education system failing to provide youth with basic skills that employers require such as literacy and numeracy.

The study further stipulates that “Young people wait longer in the labour market queue, particularly for their first job and lack of experience is a major reason for unemployment. Schools offer little career guidance, leading to youth lacking information on matching skills and interests to their chosen school subjects; and young people lacking social networks which can help leverage information-gathering on the education, labour market, job availability and job access.”

It is for this reason that government should re-prioritise its resources to support youth development and continue to stride forward in developing programmes that are aimed at alleviating poverty and breaking the skills gap.

One of the key programmes in the Gauteng Provincial Government (GPG) is the Tshepo 1Million programme which seeks to secure job opportunities for one million young people. The one is Gauteng Department of Social Development’s Welfare-to-Work Programme (W2W) which is aimed at transiting youth from depending on the welfare system into permanent employment or provide further education and training opportunities.

Initially, the W2W programme was developed to support young women who are recipients of Child Support Grants, but it further expanded to assist exiting foster care beneficiaries, victims of gender-based violence, recovering substance abuse service users, women exiting victim empowerment shelters, beneficiaries exiting child justice system, and all other beneficiaries to transit from welfare into the world of self-sustenance.

The programme incubates individuals for a period of not more than three (3) years and based on their assessment and educational profile, individuals are linked to education and training programmes that are aimed at ensuring that they are able to move themselves out of the social security system.

The Gauteng Department of Social Development provides accredited skills training programmes through partnerships with accredited training partners in the field of Hospitality, Real Estate, Photography, Beauty Therapy, and Hair Dressing.

To date 100 637 young people have benefitted from various accredited skills training programmes implemented by the Department since 2013 working in partnership with Non-Profit Organisations that have similar objectives in their mandate of creating employment and reducing poverty across the province.

As part of upscaling the Department’s skills development programme and responding to the current energy crisis, through funded NPOs in Tshwane, Sedibeng, and Ekurhuleni, 110 young people have been empowered with accredited courses in Solar PV installation NQF level 3, Renewable Energy NQF level 3 and 4.

To address youth unemployment and expansion on skills development, 120 438 young people are targeted in the 2023/24 financial year in the field of Electrical Engineering, Carpentry, Civil Construction, Water and Process, Animal Production, Fibre Processing and Manufacturing, Information Technology to name a few.

These courses are all accredited by various SETAs.