EMPOWERING YOUNG PEOPLE THROUGH ENTREPRENEURSHIP

BUSINESS LIVE / 05 JULY 2021 - 11.22 / SPONSORED

During the recent Absa Business Day Supplier Development Dialogues on empowering youth through entrepreneurship, moderator Joanne Joseph observed that Africa has a real crisis on its hands. Youth unemployment averages between 45% and 60% of the total number of unemployed across Africa and in SA the expanded youth unemployment is a shocking 74%. The youth are the future and thus jobless youth represent our greatest socioeconomic and political challenge.

Though there are many excellent youth support initiatives across the continent, we are barely scratching the surface. To put this in perspective, in SA we would need to create 8m additional jobs to stem this crisis. That’s 22,220 new jobs every day for a year or three new companies as big as Vodacom — which employs 7,500 employees — each day. Alternatively, we would need to create 2,000 new SMEs that each employ 10 people every day for a year. The task is immense, and current strategies and initiatives are not coming close to tackling it.

Kanelani Mavundza, supplier diversity champion at Absa Group procurement, emphasised the need to nurture small businesses as these are catalysts for creating jobs, especially for young people, who are the consumers of the future.

Small businesses ... are catalysts for creating jobs

Kanelani Mavundza

“As corporate supply chain and supplier development stakeholders, we need to talk about what more can be done to address the challenge of unemployment. At Absa we believe that promoting entrepreneurship could be key to growing the economy and getting more people employed,” he said.

How can Africa empower young people through entrepreneurship?

Mmathebe Zvobwo, executive ESD at Telkom, recommended that to optimise limited resources, Africa needs an approach which differentiates between empowering youth for survivalist socioeconomic activity and developing entrepreneurs who can grow rapidly to scale into supply chains........

FOR FURTHER READING : https://www.businesslive.co.za/companies/2021-07-05-empowering-young-people-through-entrepreneurship/

Disclaimer - The views expressed here are not necessarily those of the BEE CHAMBER