Programme Director
The Deputy Mayor of the eThekwini Municipality,
Councillor Nomvuzo Shabalala Councillors present;
Chairpersons and CEOs of all state-owned entities;
Representatives of social partner formations;
Exhibitors and Participants;
The youth of our province;
Ladies and gentlemen;
All protocol observed
It is an honour for us as the provincial government of KwaZulu-Natal to welcome you all to the second installment of the Mandela’s Children Entrepreneurship and Careers Expo (MCECEs) an initiative aimed at adding further traction to our vision of driving accelerated social transformation in our country.
Programme Director, when we aptly adopted the name of one of the greatest leaders of the twentieth century to name these Youth Career Expos, we did so precisely because we wanted our young people to emulate that greatness and continue to defy the odds that life will doubtless throw their way.
Indeed, we want to create a youth today that will graduate into the leaders of tomorrow; a youth unperturbed by breaking the mold and taking the road less travelled.
But we realise that in order to kindle this gallant spirit, ladies and gentlemen, we need to nurture our youth in the right direction and afford them the opportunities to help them realise their full potential.
Indeed, the youth of any nation represent the future of that nation. If we fail to mould a youth that can take its place in the future and lead our country to prosperity, then the future of our country is bleak. Because of this reason alone, as the government of KwaZulu-Natal we have undertaken to continually devise strategies and programmes aimed at ensuring that our future leaders do not fall by the wayside.
This programme of entrepreneurship and career exhibitions is, therefore, a practical response to the challenge of youth unemployment and general lack of direction in terms of taking our struggle forward.
Programme Director, one of the diabolical geniuses of our country’s apartheid past was its ability to use education or rather a lack thereof, as well as general access to career and business opportunities and information to stunt the positive growth of the Black child. Indeed, we realise that even nearly two decades into our hard won democracy, there remains, particularly in the most rural parts of our province, a residue of this apartheid legacy.
Therefore, ladies and gentlemen, interventions such as the MCECEs are geared precisely towards emancipating our young people who remain uninformed about available opportunities. In this regard, our government looks to the efforts of the various social partners including the private sector to ensure that we address this skills and information gap.
When we first launched these MCECEs in rural Umkhanyakude earlier this year, we signaled our intentions of rotating them throughout all eleven districts in the Province. In the coming weeks and months, we will double our efforts to ensure that we deliver on that promise.
Programme Director, more than 50% of the unemployed population in KwaZulu-Natal fall within the youth bracket. This has prompted our government to call upon all sectors of the economy to prioritise the facilitation of employment creation and skills development. In this regard, youth have been identified as a critical population group in the unemployment challenge.
In line with our Province’s Youth Economic Empowerment strategy (YEES 2013-2030) we have intensified our youth economic empowerment initiatives and the Mandela’s Children Entrepreneurship and Careers Expos is but one example of our seriousness about youth emancipation in the province.
Our signing of the “Youth Employment Accord” points to a renewed commitment by all social partners to deal with youth unemployment and foster youth economic empowerment.
Therefore, these MCECEs seek to achieve the following broad objectives:
- To deliver integrated services that enable entrepreneurship and employment activity amongst the youth.
- To give an on-the-spot assistance to attendees to the EXPO, including workshops on access to finance and linkages with prospective employers.
- To create an environment for easy accessibility of business and career information for the youth.
- To utilise technology to collect and disseminate information to create opportunities for the youth.
- To create an exciting but professional culture of information sharing for and by youth-edutainment.
The MCECEs have the following unique attributes from any other youth expos currently in existence in the province and the country at large:
- Provide both entrepreneurship and careers information and guidance in one event.
- Deliver practical and feasible information dissemination mechanisms through live demonstrations (relevant institutions providing services on the venue)
- Package localised business opportunities earmarked for the youth in each area in line with the spatial or regional economic development strategies of the province (Specific Economic Sectors Focus).
- Present specific and existing job opportunities by stakeholders and provide opportunities up-take guidance for the youth
- Deliver the information in a youth friendly and appealing environment with the use of technology and edutainment systems.
We need to make it clear that focus of these expos is not only on careers and career guidance. While this is an important feature of these expos, we will also put more emphasis on youth entrepreneurship development. With technological advancements reducing the world into a global village, we need entrepreneurs who are innovative and creative.
We need entrepreneurs who will be able to exploit opportunities that are brought by global economic developments. One such development is regional economic integration.
This means that instead of concentrating on our 51,5 million market as South Africa, we need to think more of the more than 250 million market that makes up the SADC region.
This takes me back to the point I made earlier about on about creating a new breed of young people who are not afraid to take risks and venture into new territories.
What this means is that we need entrepreneurs who are able to think creatively and expand their world view. This is the challenge I pose to our youth entrepreneurs. But, what has government, as a social partner, done to empower youth to become entrepreneurs?
Programme Director, I would like to now share with you some statistical data on youth development development initiatives in KwaZulu-Natal:
Since the inception of our KZN youth short skills training programme in 2009, which focuses on training youth in various technical skills ranging from Construction, Electrical Engineering, Hospitality and Agriculture, we have trained in in excess of 8,000 youths in the above mentioned disciplines.
In the last two years alone, we have trained and successfully placed about 2,000 youths in the various employment positions. Of this number; about 800 students were from the eThekwini Municipal area. At a national level, ladies and gentlemen, our government has also come up with pragmatic interventions aimed at fostering youth entrepreneurship.
The Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) for instance, under its gro-scheme a R10 billion purse offering financial support to start-up businesses with the main aim of contributing towards sustainable job creation has since ring-fenced R1 billion to be disbursed solely to youth owned enterprises.
Closer to home, our provincial entity, Ithala Development Finance Corporation, has also reaffirmed its support for youth economic empowerment by launching the Imbewu Loan Fund a R15 million fund which is aimed at helping youth owned enterprises with financial and non-financial support.
These gestures are to be welcomed as a timely intervention and deft decisions. It is up to young people to take the proverbial bull by the horns and ensure that they develop business strategies that will enable them to access their share of the R1 billion bounty earmarked for them by the IDC and R15 million set aside by Ithala respectively.
Programme Director, at a time when the world over, youth entrepreneurship appears to be the apex priority in the development agendas of many developing countries, it would be counterintuitive at best and tragic at worst for us to buck the trend of international best practice.
A glimpse into countries such as Singapore and Malaysia reveals that these two developing nations rely heavily on entrepreneurship as a means of sustaining their respective economies.
A paper on youth entrepreneurship trends published in the latter country reveals that after feeling the severity of the global economic crunch, Malay youths have decided on entrepreneurship at the expense of other career options and are able to survive the economic crisis.
The paper says and I quote: The Malay youth entrepreneurs had shown that they possessed particular personality traits and behavioural characteristics of motivation and emotion as key psychological and social elements that drive people to venture into entrepreneurship.
The youths’ basis of motivation was human needs for achievement, power and affiliation. It was their spirit of competitiveness, personal satisfaction, monetary benefits and independence that had motivated them to become entrepreneurs and sustain that entrepreneurship.
Programme Director, the foregoing example serves to illustrate to the young people gathered here today that not even the best interventions and funding models will help their business ventures succeed if their psyche and indeed attitude is misplaced. According to available statistics, 72 per cent of South Africa’s unemployed are younger than 34.
The quagmire of high unemployment which stares young people in the face demands that that we alter our attitudes and acquaint ourselves with the changing faces of the global economic outlook.
Programme Director, I earlier alluded to the Youth Economic Empowerment Strategy (YEES 2013 to 2030).
The YEES 2013 to 2030 vision is premised on creating an economically emancipated; capacitated and responsible youth which actively participate in the mainstream economy and become the cornerstone upon which the province builds a more prosperous and more inclusive economy.
The YEES vision rests on five strategic pillars, which are in line with international best practices on youth economic empowerment.
These are:
- Enterprise Development
- Youth Employment Creation
- Training and Skills Development
- Information Dissemination
- Institutional Development
The above pillars have been linked to specific strategic goals and strategic objectives, which leads to specific programmatic interventions to be implemented.
We will, together with other government departments and various stakeholders, work tirelessly to ensure the smooth implementation of the identified programmatic interventions to ensure that each pillar of the Strategy is addressed accordingly.
While there a lot of proposed programmatic interventions in the strategy a total of five (5) .intervention programmes are to be pursued with immediate effect include the following:
- Establishment of a Provincial Youth Economic Empowerment Fund in this regard the department will work with our very own Ithala and NYDA to reshape, intensify and accelerate the existing Imbewu Fund to create the Provincial Youth Economic Empowerment fund.
- Establishment of the Provincial Youth “Green Army” Initiative with a venture creation model focusing on renewable Energy, Environmental Projects and Infrastructural Projects in this regard the department will work with other relevant government departments, mainly the Department of Public Enterprises and SOEs in accordance with the SIPs
- Establishment of a Provincial Economic SkillsDevelopment, Career Mentorship and Practical Placement Programme
- Establishment of a Provincial Publication on Youth Economic Empowerment (Hard Copy and Electronically)
- Establishment of a Provincial Business and institutional Exchange and Mentorship Programme.
It is important to note that the implementation of the above programmatic intervention depends largely on stakeholder collaboration and integration both from public and private sector stakeholders.
In conclusion, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to draw to the attention of my young audience today what I call the philosophy of the three S’s. The first S stands for Seek an opportunity, the second S stands for See an opportunity and the third S is for Seize an opportunity.
I thank you.
