Speech by Minister Jeff Radebe, Minister in the Presidency for Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation, on the occasion of the Youth in Business Policy Dialogue and Gauteng Launch
“Vision 2030: The Role and Responsibility of the Youth”
Allow me to express my gratitude for the invite to speak on this very important occasion. I have been requested to unpack a subtheme with a focus on the role and responsibility of the youth with regards the National Development Plan (NDP) Vision 2030.
The main objective of the NDP is to eliminate poverty and reduce inequality from amongst our people. The NDP traces the genesis of our transformation agenda to the 1994 democratic breakthrough, an occasion which made a tremendous promise for a better life for all our people, black and white. By so doing, the NDP thus successfully cast the contours of transformation up to the year 2030, as an antithesis of the legacy of apartheid that the post 1994 dispensation inevitably inherited.
Precisely because of its long trajectory, the NDP is intergenerational in its forecast, and in this sense position youth development as pivotal to the successful realisation of its development targets. There is no way the NDP can succeed without involving the youth, naturally because the elderly generation must eventually face their demise and retirement from active economic activities.
Thus if we fail to position the youth as central to relay the baton of the NDP, we would have in fact planned to fail. Statistics demonstrate that the youth are the most marginalised with regards to active economic activities, particularly with respect to employment. This is largely because we are a youth nation.
That is why the Executive Summary of the NDP makes the following assertion: “In particular, young people deserve better educational and economic opportunities, and focused efforts are required to eliminate gender inequality. Promoting gender equality and greater opportunities for young people are integrated themes that run throughout this plan.”
Yet again, in emphasising the urgency of the NDP, the Executive Summary further points to the pivotal role to be played by the youth: “The plan focuses on the critical capabilities needed to transform the economy and society. Achieving these capabilities is not automatic, nor will they emerge if the country continues on its present trajectory. Rising levels of frustration and impatience suggest that time is of the essence: failure to act will threaten democratic gains. In particular, South Africa must find ways to urgently reduce alarming levels of youth unemployment and to provide young people with broader opportunities.”
The National Youth Policy 2020 highlights the actual challenges faced by young people as it asserts that: “South Africa is not immune to this global trend. According to the South African June 2014 labour force survey, 36.1 percent of young people between the ages of 15 and 35 are unemployed, which is almost double the 15.6 percent of adults aged between 35 and 64 who are unemployed. The labour absorption rate for adults is 57.8 percent, almost twice that of young people, at 30.8 percent. Young women face even higher levels of unemployment – 34.5 percent of young women are neither employed nor at school, including further and higher education, compared to 29.9 percent of young men.”
Clearly this calls for a concerted intervention to remedy the historic imbalances occasioned by apartheid. We cannot rely exclusively on the correction of market forces as classical economics would insist by the Keynesian paradigm that calls for government intervention as in through a Developmental State.
Accordingly, the NYP 2020 articulates the following as mandate derived from the NDP:
- “ Provide nutrition intervention for pregnant women and young children, ensure universal access to two years of early childhood development and improve the school system, including increasing the number of students achieving above 50 percent in literacy and mathematics, increasing learner retention rates to 90 percent and bolstering teacher training.
- Strengthen youth service programmes and introduce new community-based programmes to offer young people life-skills
- training, entrepreneurship training and opportunities to participate in community development programmes.
- Strengthen and expand the number of further education and training (FET) colleges to increase the participation ratio to 25 percent, increase the graduation rate of FET colleges to 75 percent, provide full funding assistance to students from poor families and develop community safety centres to prevent crime.
- Create a tax incentive for employers to reduce the initial cost of hiring young labour-market entrants, provide a subsidy to the placement sector to identify, prepare and place matric graduates into work; expand learnerships and make training vouchers directly available to job-seekers; introduce a formalised graduate recruitment scheme for the public service to attract highly skilled people; and expand the role of state-owned enterprises in training artisans and technical professionals.
- Capacitate school and community sports and recreation and encourage healthy and active lifestyles.”
Undoubtedly, the National Development Plan seeks to lay down the broad framework backed by corresponding targets in each area of development, within which all our people can play their respective roles to advance their own development and by extension the development of our country. Epitomizing this quest for an enabling environment amongst others is the plan to ensure a Developmental State that is capable of intervening in favour of our development objectives and targets.
Thus since we have embraced the mixed economy paradigm, both the State and the private sector must play critical role to ensure vibrant economic activities within the axis of reducing inequality, eliminating poverty, ensuring pivotal role of the youth and women.
I am happy that you have considered it important and relevant to interrogate the role played by the NDP in your own economic endeavors. This is important because the NDP is the blue print of the broad spectrum within the youth must find their own role. And the NDP itself is alive to this quest and it spells out the importance therein loudly and clearly.
I am confident that whilst the NDP is first and foremost a macro economic outlook, you will as you interrogate this document find resonance with your micro-economic projects that must practically further youth development. Of course the NDP also spells out the micro economic outlook, beyond the general macro outlook.
As the Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation, we are entrusted with overseeing youth development, hence amongst others the National Youth Development Agency falls within our mandate in government. I have designated the Deputy Minister Buti Manamela to be dedicated person dealing with youth development. Under his watch, we have developed and adopted the National Youth Policy 2020. This National Youth Policy is derived from the NDP and thus seeks to synchronize youth development with the targets we have made towards the year 2030 of reducing inequality and eliminating poverty.
The National Youth Policy broadly seeks to address the perennial challenges of youth marginalisation through higher levels of youth employment, greater skills acquisition and more successful and vibrant youth entrepreneurship. Whilst the NDP seeks to address these policy goals across the board, the NYP expressly cascade these to youth development.
As some of you would already know, the implementation of the NDP is done periodically through the Medium Term Strategic Frameworks, which are five year government development programmes. In the last meeting of the National Planning Commission which is responsible for overseeing the implementation of the NDP by advising the Executive in that regard, it was suggested that the National Budget by National Treasury must reflect the aims and objectives of the NDP. I would add that if we dare fail to include youth development in the National, Provincial and Local Government Budgetary processes, we would have failed the course of the NDP towards 2030. We would also have failed the NYP.
But allow me to hasten to point out that the success of both the NYP and the NDP do not rely exclusively on the role of government, vis-à-vis the National, Provincial and Local Government Budgets.
One of the most critical aspects for the realization of the NDP development targets is a growing economy, which is itself integral to the NDP as a whole. Our population is increasing and that is putting more pressure on available resources particularly where such is dispensed through the national, provincial and local government budgets. It thus follows that we cannot meet the increasing needs of the population without growing the economy.
Thus in the Executive Summary of the NDP we say that: “A sustainable increase in employment will require a faster-growing economy and the removal of structural impediments, such as poor-quality education or spatial settlement patterns that exclude the majority. These are essential to achieving higher rates of investment and competitiveness, and expanding production and exports. Business, labour, communities and government will need to work together to achieve faster economic growth.”
But how do we grow the economy. With plants we know a certain amount of cultivation of the soil, fertilizer, water and pesticides would help ensure they grow until the bear the fruits as required of them. Likewise with regards growing the economy, there are certain ingredients that must be “cultivated” and applied to ensure we achieve our targets. But the economy is more complex than plants and depends on domestic and global conditions, the latter which is generally out of our control.
However, in the NDP we make a case that despite unfavourable global conditions in general, we can nonetheless harness some of their features to facilitate the realization of our national development programmes. As for instance when the Rand loses value against foreign currencies and thus making imports expensive, the spinoff is that we can export more as pricewise our produce become more attractive to the international markets.
Critical to economic growth is thus the ingenuity of the entrepreneur working against all odds to realise profits. In the Executive Summary to the NDP we say that: “Economic growth needs to accelerate in a more inclusive manner. These are twin imperatives. Government's New Growth Path aims to create 5 million new jobs between 2010 and 2020. It seeks to do so by providing a supportive environment for growth and development, while promoting a more labour-absorbing economy. Its proposals are intended to lower the cost of living for poor households and for businesses through targeted microeconomic reforms, especially in transport, public services, telecommunications and food.”
Bug what are the drivers of economic growth? This is where you come in as young people. Innovation is critical aspect for any entrepreneur. The importance of constant innovation is best exemplified in the ICT sector. Not long ago it had become standard that if one wanted a cellphone one would buy one of the Nokia models. However, lately the leaders of the pack are Samsung and i-phone. Likewise blackberry suffered market losses and all this can be summed up in one word: innovation.
As government we have even institutionalized support for innovation in various industries because we are fully aware that if critical for the survival of any entrepreneur. As I have said, this is where you come in as young people. I cannot tell you where you must invest with regards to entrepreneurship as that goes with the calculated risks that one must take.
I know we may have inevitably created this false expectations that we must spoon feed our entrepreneurs with business ideas, it does not work that way! Every business venture carries inherent risks and that must be owned up entirely by the owner. It is after all why it is called the private sector and not the public sector. We need to demystify this view suggestive that if there is no entrepreneurship in our economy it is government to blame.
As I understand it, what it takes to be an entrepreneur amongst others is to have an idea of the quality product, understand the demand versus its current supply in the determination of the market, knowing where and how technology for production and marketing will be done and from where and how funding for the enterprise would be sourced. This government will not do for any specific individual but again support on expertise in this regard has been established amongst others through the NYDA and other development agencies such as the IDC.
I am happy that you have chosen on your own accord to take the bull by the horns, that is the spirit we must cultivate amongst young people, as the youth did during the 1976 Student Uprising. The liberation movement welcomed the influx of young people crossing the borders into exile in support of the struggle against apartheid during the critical years of the Student Uprising.
Likewise, government has created enabling environment as spelt out in the NDP and will continue to do so. Amongst others over R2.7 billion has been set aside for youth entrepreneurship by the IDC. The NYDA has more information with regards to this, alternatively you may approach the IDC directly.
Through the Youth Accord, we remain committed towards setting aside 30% of government procurement in support of youth entrepreneurship. The NYDA is in the process of finalising a research in this regard that will attempt to unlock bottlenecks encountered in the implementation of the Youth Accord and related youth development targets.
In an ongoing study by the NYDA, the following recommendations were made by various youth organizations. Firstly that the “Youth set asides should be implemented along the lines of a mandatory 30 percent across all sectors of the economy so that youth are exposed to low and high skill intensive sectors;” Secondly, that “Interventions need to be put in place to prepare youth owned enterprise for their participation in youth set asides i.e training interventions on statutory compliance, tender process etc.”
What is evidently clear is that the role of a Developmental State is crucial if we are to resolve successfully the challenges of youth development in our country and the set aside regime is such an important instrument by which we must intervene in this regard.
I have mentioned but just few examples on the role and responsibility of the youth with regards the implementation of the NDP vision 2030. Part of the responsibility is to study this document with the view to identify opportunities accruing to youth. In addition you must be familiar with the NYP 2020 which seeks to adapt the NDP in youth development. The MTSF remains the immediate vehicle through which we implement the NDP and likewise the document is published for your won perusal and benefit.
As young people it is your task to define what must become our main economic activities going into the future. It is in your reading of the domestic and international markets that you will make informed choices on the entrepreneurship risks and opportunities offered by both local and international markets. One of the advantages of the South African economy is comparative advantage in accessing advanced technologies for manufactures for the purposes of both local consumption and exports into other African countries. It is your duty as young people to go beyond the borders and find economic solutions that of mutual or reciprocal benefit with other African countries, thus capitalizing on the huge market occasioned by our combined populations.
If you are to be radical in pursuing entrepreneurship ventures, you need to move out of the orthodox cocoon on how things have been done over the past decades. As I have indicated, those who make it in the world economy are those who are always on the frontiers of innovation. You will not make your mark by duplicating what everyone is already doing. Mark Shuttleworth demonstrated that it is possible to do the unthinkable. Our country and the African continent as a whole will only be a better place because its youth have taken the bull by the horns instead of enlisting a series of excuses why certain things cannot be done. Your generation has proved the tenacity to effect change through the successful #rhodesmustfall and #feesmustfall campaigns.
I am therefore confident that these initiatives you are taking today are not opportunity to enlist excuses but the bold steps that your ingenuity is capable of effecting to ensure the NDP vision to reduce inequality and eliminate poverty by 2030 becomes a living reality. On the occasion of the NPC meeting, my colleague the Deputy Chairperson of the NPC Prof Makgoba asserted that we cannot effect change until we do “crazy” things. I am sure that someone must have thought of Mark Shuttleworth as crazy and so must have been the likes of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Maponya, Kaizer Motaung and Irvin Khoza, amongst many from around the world. The Chinese economy has achieved wonders because Deng Xiaoping sought to do the craziest of things from 1978, thereby laying down the foundations of the modern Chinese economy. So you must not be dissuaded by those who call you crazy but must endeavor to reach for the stars. In entrepreneurship you are not given answers but answers is what you find for yourselves. This is essentially the hallmark in the making of any entrepreneur.
Again allow me to express my delight at your commitment to partake in the resolution of our national development challenges as identified through the NDP and the NYP. I am confident that the youth will continue to emulate the youth of 1976 by embracing the challenge of youth economic participation. I am confident that as you seek to be pragmatist, none other than yourselves as young people know what is best for the youth of our country.
As government we will continue to pledge our support. Where enabling instruments are weak, we expect you to raise the alarm so that appropriate interventions can be made to resolve whatever impasse. My parting shot to you in line with the theme I was given, you are responsible for your own destiny!
I thank you!
