A RECENT World Bank study of southern Africa’s young population talks about the "demographic window of opportunity" in which the proportion of working-age people reaches its peak.Ideally, countries whose working-age young people are becoming an ever-larger proportion of the adult population should be in a position to reap the benefits as more youngsters enter the workforce and start earning and saving and contributing to GDP. But reaping that demographic dividend depends on having the right policies in place to educate and hire all those new workers, drawing them into the workforce so that they become more productive over time.SA, with its bulge in the 18-30 age group, should, in theory, be in a position to reap that dividend. In practice, it is creating a demographic disaster with ever more young people not simply unemployed, but never employed, with little chance they ever will be.The statistics on youth unemployment are disturbing. A recent Treasury study notes that unemployment ...
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