CASE STUDY #2

YOUTH CAPITAL’S PART OF THE ACTION

Nearly two-thirds of South Africa’s youth are unemployed. Youth Capital advocates for youth-centred and evidencebased solutions to deal with youth unemployment.9 In 2020, it launched an Action Plan that prioritises 10 key levers to address youth unemployment. These 10 levers connect young people’s lived experience of unemployment with available quantitative and qualitative data about the barriers to finding employment.

In 2021, Youth Capital consolidated the main learnings from two years of youth-centred campaigning and concluded that despite many stakeholders in government, the private sector and civil society investing resources to address youth unemployment, their efforts were too fragmented to make a big difference. It became evident that South Africa lacked a unifying strategy to tackle the problem. “No single organisation can tackle all 10 points in isolation, let alone the government. We are calling on individuals and the sector to be Part of the Action,” explains Kristal Duncan-Williams, project lead, Youth Capital. To date, 70 organisations have signed up, rallying around one or more levers in the Action Plan which resonate with their area of expertise.