Forty-five percent. That is nearly one in every two young South Africans between the ages of 15 and 34 who want to work but cannot find a job. According to Statistics South Africa’s Quarterly Labour Force Survey, young people not in employment, education or training in this age group increased by half a percentage point between Q1 2025 and Q1 2026, reaching 45.6% in Q1 2026.
I know what numbers can do. While they help us understand the scale of the challenge, they can also distance us from the human realities they represent. Behind these statistics are young people in our communities and neighbourhoods, each with aspirations, talent and potential, yet without access to meaningful economic opportunities.
South Africa has a remarkably young population. People between the ages of 15 and 34 make up just over a third of our population, with an average age of 28 to 29. In almost any other context, this would be celebrated as a powerful economic advantage, a signal of energy, innovation and future productive capacity. Instead, we face a growing risk of a generation being left behind. Today, close to two million young South Africans are classified as discouraged work seekers.
They have not given up because they lack ambition to contribute. They have stopped actively looking because the labour market has repeatedly told them that there is no room. That is not a personal failure – it’s a response to the environment in which they feel discouraged before they even reach their first real chance at work. This should concern all of us, because when young people lose hope, the consequences extend far beyond the labour market.
South Africa does not have a shortage of young talent or of organisations investing in youth development. What we have is a shortage of pathways that connect their potential to real opportunity. Too many promising initiatives exist in isolation from one another, while too many young people remain disconnected from the skills, networks and experiences that could help them enter the workforce.
Volunteering can build skills and create opportunities
With youth unemployment being one of South Africa’s greatest challenges, we need to be deliberate about identifying and scaling what is already working. One of the most overlooked pathways to opportunities, I believe, is volunteering. When designed with intention and linked to skills development, mentorship and networks, volunteering can become far more than an act of service. It can become a bridge to economic opportunity.
Mentorship is a particularly powerful mechanism that leaders with specialised skills can use to share their expertise, build resilience and guide young people to navigate their path into the workforce. Through mentorship, beneficiaries gain valuable capabilities in problem-solving and creative thinking, preparing them for the workplace and improving their readiness for employment. Mentoring and opening opportunities for learning also foster a sense of belonging and connection to opportunities that may otherwise feel beyond reach.
What strikes me the most is the evidence of what is already working but sitting quietly in silos across business sectors.
The International Association for Volunteer Effort (IAVE), working across 164 countries and drawing on insights from nearly 15,000 people, has introduced Reskilling Revolution Africa in partnership with IBM. This programme has already engaged more than 30,000 young people across Nigeria, Ethiopia and South Africa, with 153,000 hours of verified volunteering and more than 2,000 internationally recognised digital credentials earned. Significantly, 63% of these participants were young women.
Then there is Zlto, an award-winning digital rewards platform, co-founded by Allan van der Meulen from Mitchells Plain. He developed the app to help young South Africans overcome barriers to employment by rewarding them for community volunteering, learning and other positive contributions.
The success of this platform is evident in that, today, it has more than one million users, has tracked more than 2.5 million hours of community service and has distributed more than R3-million in rewards that volunteers can redeem across 3,000 stores. The Zlto platform’s success shows both the appetite among young people to take part and the potential to scale its effect even more.
From conversations to solutions
How do we move from conversations about youth employment to coordinated solutions?
The question is not whether solutions exist. The question is how to bring them together at scale. One of the most important shifts in thinking is recognising that volunteering, when designed with intention and connected to real opportunities, is a legitimate employment pipeline.
Research by IAVE has shown that when young people volunteer, they can gain real, measurable competencies, including critical thinking, communication, resilience and self-leadership. These are essential for the future of work. Yet we are not framing volunteer work as experience or integrating volunteerism into policies and strategies.
The United Nations General Assembly declared 2026 the International Year of Volunteers for Sustainable Development, which recognises that sustainable development goals will not be accomplished without volunteer action. Globally, 34.5% of the working-age population – 2.1 billion people – volunteer each month.
Evidence continues to show that work experience, mentorship and networks are regularly the factors that help young people access their first job. A study conducted by the Harvard Center for International Development found that mentored students were 25% less likely to reject job offers and 27% more likely to be employed three months after graduation.
These resources already exist in abundance within every corporation in this country. The challenge is not a shortage of solutions. It is the absence of the alignment and collaboration that can connect solutions to the young people who need them.
What we are calling for is a coordinated, cross-sector movement where corporates, NGOs, the government and young people themselves co-design pathways into work and share resources. This movement is one that doesn’t compete in the social impact space but that collaborates to give more young people access to volunteering so they can build skills towards employment.
We have the knowledge. We have the platforms and tools. What we need now is to move from working in silos to building something collectively that can transform and scale the future of our young people.
I want every leader and person involved in volunteering to ask: How can we use our skills, our networks, existing platforms and our people to open opportunities for young people?
The young people of this country are not asking for handouts. They are asking for access to experience, access to learning and access to opportunity. We owe it to them to open access to employment that will make sure our country can benefit from their productivity and resilience in the future.
The long-term prosperity of our business sector is inseparable from the communities in which it operates. It depends on how we respond. South Africa’s demographic advantage should not be a demographic risk. When young people thrive, our communities thrive – we all thrive. DM
Comments
Scroll down to load comments...
Facts Only
* 45.6% of South Africans aged 15-34 not in employment, education, or training in Q1 2026.
* The youth unemployment rate increased by 0.5 percentage point between Q1 2025 and Q1 2026.
* People aged 15-34 constitute over one-third of the South African population.
* Approximately two million young South Africans are classified as discouraged work seekers.
* The average age of the 15-34 demographic is 28 to 29.
* Reskilling Revolution Africa is a partnership between the International Association for Volunteer Effort (IAVE) and IBM.
* Reskilling Revolution Africa has engaged over 30,000 young people in Nigeria, Ethiopia, and South Africa.
* 63% of Reskilling Revolution Africa participants are young women.
* Zlto is a digital rewards platform co-founded by Allan van der Meulen.
* Zlto has over one million users and has distributed more than R3-million in rewards.
* The United Nations General Assembly declared 2026 the International Year of Volunteers for Sustainable Development.
* A Harvard Center for International Development study found mentored students were 27% more likely to be employed three months after graduation.
Executive Summary
South Africa faces a critical youth employment crisis, with nearly 46% of those aged 15-34 currently excluded from the workforce, education, or training. This demographic represents over a third of the total population, creating a systemic risk where a significant portion of the country's potential productive capacity remains untapped. Many of these individuals are classified as discouraged work seekers, having ceased active job searches due to persistent market rejection.
The proposed solution centers on transforming volunteering from a simple act of service into a structured employment pipeline. By integrating volunteering with mentorship and digital credentialing, young people can acquire essential soft skills—such as critical thinking and resilience—that are often prerequisites for formal employment. Initiatives like the IBM-partnered Reskilling Revolution Africa and the Zlto rewards platform provide evidence that scalable digital tools can connect youth to these opportunities. The objective is a cross-sector movement involving government, NGOs, and corporations to align isolated success stories into a coordinated national strategy.
Full Take
The strongest version of this narrative argues that the gap between youth talent and employment is not a lack of skill, but a lack of "bridge" experiences. By reframing volunteering as professional development, the strategy attempts to bypass the "experience trap" where entry-level jobs require prior experience that the market refuses to provide.
The narrative employs a specific framing: it shifts the failure from the individual to the environment, positioning the crisis as a structural "pathway" problem rather than a pedagogical or economic one. There is a subtle reliance on the success of specific platforms (IAVE/IBM, Zlto) to suggest that digital coordination is the primary missing link. While these examples are compelling, they function as a proof-of-concept for a larger, more complex systemic failure.
Rooted in a neoliberal paradigm of "employability," the assumption is that if youth are simply more "ready" (via soft skills and mentorship), the market will naturally absorb them. This ignores the fundamental question of demand: whether the economy is actually capable of creating the millions of jobs required, regardless of how "employable" the youth become.
The implication is a transfer of responsibility toward the corporate sector to co-design pathways. While this empowers corporate social responsibility, it risks turning the state's duty to ensure economic opportunity into a series of voluntary, fragmented corporate initiatives.
Bridge Questions:
1. If youth are successfully reskilled via volunteering, does the macroeconomic capacity exist to employ them, or does this simply create a more qualified pool of unemployed seekers?
2. What are the risks of institutionalizing "volunteerism" as a primary employment pipeline in terms of labor exploitation?
Counterstrike Scan: A bad actor would use this narrative to distract from a lack of industrial policy by promoting "soft skill" training as a substitute for actual job creation. The actual content does not match this pattern; it advocates for genuine cross-sector collaboration and acknowledges the systemic nature of the discouragement.
Patterns detected: none