Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, the Minister of Women, Youth, and Persons with Disabilities has published a National Youth Policy (NYP) that aims to uplift young South Africans over the next ten years, BusinessTech reports.
The goal of the policy is to develop young people at the local, provincial and national levels.
While it noted that 35 is a high ceiling to classify as “youth” it said that this is needed to address the “historical imbalances” in South Africa. With this broad definition of youth the policy would cover approximately 20.6 million people or 37% of the population.
A key part of the policy is focused on lowering youth unemployment by getting more young people into work.
With this in mind the policy proposes introducing a basic income grant that is specifically for unemployed youth, said the department.
“[This will] support young people and young discouraged jobseekers’ efforts to enter the labour market by introducing a Basic Universal Income Grant – an incentive similar to the Covid-19 Social Relief of Distress grant primarily to support youth to transition into employment or entrepreneurship.”
The policy contains a host of initiatives to curb unemployment, these include:
- Equipping young people with skills in key growth sectors to access opportunities such as the green, waste and food economies and to advocate for the development of a catch-up strategy for those who have been left behind due to dropping out of the school system;
- The National Youth Development Agency (NYDA) and the Department of Small Business Development implement grant funding and business support for 100,000 young entrepreneurs in the next three years;
- Offering practical experience through the scaling up of the Youth Employment Service (YES) to assist them in getting practical job experience.
(Image: REUTERS)