Breaking Barriers
Young South Africans earned their praise in the President’s State of the Nation Address with a record 88% matric pass rate in 2025. And although experts remain concerned about the distribution of these gains across subjects, the growing share of Bachelor’s passes, especially from no‑fee schools, signals that both performance and equity continue trending upward.
Case Studies
Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator provides 24/7 AI-powered multichannel support to millions of work-seekers in South Africa. Since implementing the Genesys Cloud™ platform, the nonprofit has achieved 90% first-contact resolution and answer rates and has gained 24,900 hours of productivity. Its popular conversational chatbot manages 37,000 interactions per month and speech and text analytics offer deep insights for continually optimizing Harambee’s services.
Case Studies
South Africa stands at a crossroads where digital innovation and youth potential converge. As the country seeks to bridge the gap between talent and opportunity, two resources – the DigiLink case study and the Work-Integrated Learning (WIL) Programme Builder’s Toolkit – offer a blueprint for change. These initiatives, driven by Collective X and Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator, showcase how structured support, collaboration, and practical experience can unlock meaningful careers for thousands of young South Africans.
Breaking Barriers
South Africa’s formal sector is shedding jobs at a worrying rate. This is according to both the latest Quarterly Employment Survey (QES) and the Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS), which support the finding that there are 200,000 fewer individuals in formal employment than there were in the first quarter of 2023.
Knowledge & Research
In just 12 years, Gerald Chertavian has nurtured Year Up
from start-up to star status among nonprofits that offer
job training and educational support to disadvantaged
urban young adults.
Breaking Barriers
This Women’s Month, we spotlight the economic power of inclusion. The fundamental freedom to work and earn is often frustratingly elusive for women. This inequity is reason enough to pay close attention to the data on women’s participation in the labour market, but there is also a compelling economic reason to do so: growing our labour market equitably benefits everyone.
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