NOLUTHANDO QWELANI: SA’s youth are unengaged, not uninterested

Each June, SA marks Youth Month to honour the brave youth of 1976 and reflect on the progress made for today’s generation. But 2025’s Youth Month comes at a time of deep economic and social despair. Stats SA reports youth unemployment at 46.1% for ages 15–34 years and a staggering 62.4% for ages 15–24.

These are not just numbers — they reflect a generation that is increasingly excluded from economic activity, national progress and even hope.

This exclusion is not only about job scarcity. It is about structural disconnection between policy and lived experience, between economic sectors and skills, and between young people and their belief in a viable future.

According to Stats SA, the three most absorbing sectors for youth are community and social services (19.8%), finance (18.4%), and manufacturing (10.5%). But what’s concerning is that of the three, the sector most associated with decent, stable employment — manufacturing — is least absorbing of youth.

Why? Probably because it requires skilled labour, and many young people do not possess the requisite qualifications. This calls for the departments of trade, industry and competition, and higher education and training to collaboratively align skills programmes, TVET colleges and incentives for youth hiring in these high-potential sectors.

Young people without Grade 12 are most affected by unemployment, and this connects closely to the 62.4% unemployment rate among 15–24-year-olds, many of whom should still be in school, not in unemployment statistics. This raises a critical policy question: is school dropout the silent driver of youth unemployment, and are we doing enough to reverse it?

Equally worrying is what is missing from public unemployment reports. For instance, the USAid budget cuts that resulted in major job losses in SA’s health sector, particularly among youth employed through NGOs, do not feature explicitly in the data. The country’s heavy reliance on external donor funding in sectors such as public health means geopolitical shifts like the strained SA-US relationship have real consequences for employment. And yet the national conversation rarely links youth joblessness to these macroeconomic pressures.

As someone who participated in the World Bank Group Youth Summit, I have noticed another red flag. Youth from across Africa, especially within the Southern African Development Community (Sadc), enthusiastically pitched start-ups, launched collaborative ventures and supported one another’s ideas. In contrast, many SA participants, myself included, struggled to engage with these opportunities. Not because we lack talent, but possibly because we lack belief.

Compare this with Kenya, where youth unemployment stands at just 11.9%, according to the World Bank. Kenya has aggressively supported youth entrepreneurship through digitised public service access, a youth enterprise fund and community-based training. The contrast is striking.

We must act. The National Youth Development Agency, department of planning, monitoring and evaluation, and the Treasury need to champion a recovery plan for disengaged youth — one that addresses school re-entry, start-up capital, mentorship and access to productive sectors such as green manufacturing and tech.

In the light of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s recent announcement of a national dialogue to confront the country’s socioeconomic challenges, it is crucial that youth unemployment and disengagement be placed at the centre of this national conversation. This is not just a labour market issue; it is a social, developmental and nation-building imperative. Any meaningful dialogue about SA’s future must begin by asking: what kind of future are we building for our young people, and with them?

The cost of doing nothing is already clear. The 62.4% of unemployed youth aged 15–24 should be building the nation. Instead, they are becoming a forgotten generation. We cannot afford for Youth Month to be a celebration in name only. We must use it to re-imagine the policies and possibilities that can turn this crisis around.

This is what needs to change:

• Address education system failures by investing in dropout prevention, second-chance matric programmes and inclusive vocational pathways.
• Re-industrialise with youth in mind, linking industrial policy to youth training, apprenticeships and employment quotas within manufacturing and value chains.
• Localise and diversify donor-dependent sectors (such as health and social services), ensuring resilience when foreign funding retreats.
• Support innovation ecosystems for youth, including start-up funds, mentorship and platforms that connect them with global peers and markets.
• Integrate geopolitical awareness into national planning. We must understand how international relations — such as SA’s tension with the US — affect domestic employment, and respond accordingly.

SA doesn’t suffer from a lack of ideas or potential. What’s missing is a coherent, youth-centred policy framework that links education, industry, innovation and international engagement. If we want young people to believe in the future the country must first believe in them — and invest accordingly.

• Qwelani is a public policy researcher based in the presidency’s National Planning Commission. She writes in her personal capacity.