|
HARAMBEE
South Africa has one of the highest structural youth
unemployment rates in the world. Despite mass access
to secondary education, hundreds of thousands of
school leavers remain neither in employment nor
further education, and are unable to meet the
entry-level requirements set by employers and
entrepreneurial enterprises. Yet, on the demand
side, hundreds of thousands of vacancies and work
opportunities exist and go unfilled across the
private and public sector each year. Economic
activity in key growth sectors is hampered by the
difficulty, risks and costs associated with hiring
young South Africans searching for their first job.
Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator (“Harambee”)
was established in 2011 to address this
“demand-supply mismatch” by understanding what
entry-level jobs exist in the economy and
understanding what behaviours and skills are needed
to ready young people to succeed in those
opportunities. Harambee’s strategic intent is to
accelerate inclusive youth employment by reaching
young people from poor households in search of their
first job who are at high risk of long-term
unemployment and pathwaying them into the economy.
This is an even more heightened objective in a low
growth economic climate where the question of who
gets the available jobs must be answered with a view
to increasing social cohesion and shared prosperity.
Harambee has done this through innovative
solutions that break through barriers facing
first-timers including: social network,
transport and connectivity barriers,
educational signalling and functional
competence barriers, as well as the
pycho-social and behavioural barriers that
keep young people from poor households
locked out of the economy despite their
potential and will to work. The value of
this direct impact as an operator has
allowed Harambee to build knowledge assets.
Harambee draws on rich analytics and
research to enable its partners to use new
proxies for judging young people’s potential
and skills, and to develop better predictors
of success for entry-level jobs and more
entrepreneurial roles.
|
