South Africa’s NEETs crisis: Why we are failing to connect young people to work

CDE NEETS event

  • There are now 9.1 million people between 15 and 34 years of age who are not in employment, education or training.
  • CDE supports Minister of Finance Enoch Godongwana’s call to get most young people into employment rather than keeping them dependent on grants.
  • South Africa’s skills training system is expensive and inefficient; it fails to provide the skills employers are looking for and is characterised by very high dropout rates.
  • Government and business must re-examine their priorities, and move away from ad hoc interventions in failing systems and ‘boutique projects’ that make a good photograph but cannot deliver anything that is really transformational.
  • SA needs to implement a range of structural reforms essential to accelerate economic growth, allow growth to become more labour intensive, and fix the training, skills and education systems.

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