In this opinion piece, The President of the National African Federated Chamber of Commerce and Industry (NAFCOC), Gilbert Mosena, addresses one of South Africa’s most pressing challenges: youth unemployment. Mosena outlines NAFCOC’s current efforts to empower young South Africans by proposing a forward-looking strategy aimed at transforming young job seekers into job creators.
Gilbert Mosena, President of the National African Federated Chamber of Commerce and Industry (NAFCOC)
Youth unemployment remains alarmingly higher than the overall unemployment rate in South Africa at 45.5%, compared to the national average of 32.9%.High youth unemployment can have significant social and economic consequences, including increased poverty, crime, and social unrest, the percentage of young people actively looking for work but unable to find it is alarming and disheartening.
As history has no blank pages, Youth Month would not been so glaringly significant had it not been for the Youth of 1976 student uprising, fast forward to the modern-day South Africa, from education to employment: the skills crisis, the quality and relevance of education is often considered to be the root cause of youth unemployment. The labour markets and regulations vs labour-market-supply-demand-unemployment, the challenges have a different face but similar consequences of poverty, hopelessness and despair. This paints a grewsome picture of the future of this country.
NAFCOC advocates for opportunities for youth in the business arena, we are currently working on establishing the NAFCOC Business Academy in an attempt to steer Youth and South Africans in general to create employment opportunities for themselves ,we believe the vocational or technical colleges have a potential to play a significant role in balancing the scales of employment in this country .We are also working on not only skilling the youth into becoming astute business people, but also creating useful trade partnerships with business chambers across the continent to make way for access to markets for importing and exporting goods and services. The African diaspora has much to offer in terms of exchange in business practices and investment, with Africa being the second-fastest-growing region in the world after Asia. Many African countries are among the world’s fastest-growing economies.
The African Development Bank projects an average real GDP growth of 4.1% for Africa in 2025, there is far more potential and motivation to teach our youth to work at being job creators knowing there are markets that are ready for them to explore within the African continent.