The Jobs Summit took place over two days in Midrand last week, where President Ramaphosa outlined the country’s plans for tackling the trifecta of core issues plaguing South Africans; unemployment, poverty and inequality.
The unemployment rate in South Africa currently sits at 27.2% and is the seventh highest in the world.
Ramaphosa says that we cannot wait another 6 years for another Job Summit. He suggests meeting in two years and seeing what progress has been made.
Ramaphosa targets to reduce unemployment by an ambitious 6% in South Africa by 2030. But does remark that in would take ‘something extraordinary’ to meet this goal.
The Solution
Ramaphosa further stated that the Jobs Summit had reached its purpose of carving a roadmap on how to drive job creation, job retention and boost the country’s economy. This was outlined in the historic framework agreement signed by the National Economic Development and Labour Council (NEDLAC). Key points of the framework:
Who is Nedlac?
- Nedlacaims to promote consensus between the social partners on policy and legislation. Nedlac plays an important part of the policy and law-making processes in South Africa that seeks to complement Parliament’s legislative and policy processes through social dialogue (Smith, 2014)
Funding & Investment
- Investment of R100 billion in black owned enterprises over the next five years
- 5 billion for a new Smallholder Support Fund and R1.5 billion for the Township Enterprise Fund
- Up-scaling the implementation of the 30% set aside of government spend for SMMEs and co-operatives
Youth
- Bizniz in a Box youth entrepreneurship program to give youth the skills and tools to start their own business and have access to business opportunities
- Strong focus on Early Childhood Development (ECD), including the KYB Enterprise Incubator, to support women-owned ECD centres
- Harambee will strengthen its pathway management system to ensure that 1.5-million young people are part of an active network of job seekers and, that 500,000 young work-seekers are able to enter first jobs or on pathways to generating an income to sustain themselves
- Various interventions to create career pathways for the youth through programmes at TVET Colleges, the Installation Repair and Maintenance Initiative, and in the fields of health and, travel and tourism
- Finfind youth employment and SMME funding to provide training for unemployed youth
Infrastructure
- Building of 48 catalytic human settlement projects which will provide 6,350,000 housing opportunities by 2019
- Establishment of nine Agri-parks to promote agriculture and agro-processing and value chain
- Increasing recycling tonnage to 2.7 million tonnes over five years
- Community-based and owned approaches to fast track rural water access
Law & Governance
- Measures to address customs fraud and illegal imports;
- Extension of the Employment Tax Incentive for a further 10 years
- Acceleration of productive land reform
- Establishing a Presidential Climate Change Co-ordinating Commission
A key to ensuring jobs are created are through the presidential jobs committee, who will monitor progress made and ensure targets are met. Ramaphosa outlined during the Jobs Summit that they target to create 275000 jobs per year.
Key points were extracted from a Bizcommunity article.
