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Grade R -11 Metropolitan College 170 Pritchard Street Tel – 011 402 9502
Est 2009 Issue 17 - 2021
Tel : 011 616 1523 Inner-City Gazette
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24 June - 15 July 2021
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Inner City Gazette
Call to invest in youth businesses
Anzisha co-ordinator Nhlawulo Shikwambane
Johannesburg - A recent report by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) titled 2020 Policy Note on Africa: The Future of Production indicated that by 2030 the continent will have a capable labour force of over 1.6 billion, larger than Asia and South America. However, only 16 million new jobs were created between 2008 and 2016 for people aged 15-24; a small number considering the size of Africa’s youth cohort. Since Covid-19 the region lost millions of jobs. The recently released report by the Anzisha Prize, Unlocking Africa’s Job Creators, highlights lessons to help African youth become job creators instead of seekers. The
initiative sees entrepreneurship as key to job creation and resolving economic woes. It highlights that entrepreneurship, supported by a policy framework responding to challenges including cultural aversion, can help the youth create over a million jobs by 2030. One discovery was that young people create jobs for other young people; the first lesson highlighted in the report. Anzisha Prize Very Young Entrepreneurs programme co-ordinator Nhlawulo Shikwambane says youths are more than capable of building businesses. “Many of them joined the initiative as Fellows of the Anzisha Prize aged between 17 and 22, building their businesses and also teams of
age-mates. Take Vanessa Ishimwe, for example; a 23-year-old founder of Youth Initiative for Development in Africa (YIDA), that trains young people in entrepreneurship and leadership skills, based in a refugee camp in Uganda. YIDA has enrolled over 800 children in early-childhood development and employs 31 people, 15 of whom are under the age of 25,” Shikwambane says. She adds that this also proves that young people can start businesses from just about anywhere. “They do this in deep rural Africa and in the cities. Having watched over 122 fellows in our Very Young Entrepreneurs programme, many of them are pioneers in their industries, relying on their own resources. Imag-
ine what would happen if everyone, policymakers, government, big business, civic organisations, investors, teachers and parents; took action to support these young people,” she adds. Young people’s inexperience is perhaps their greatest asset, the report found. It said they are less likely to be discouraged from trying new solutions for fear that they may not work, and are perhaps more likely to enter an industry asking questions where others relied on uninterrogated assumptions. “Young people have not yet formed rigid ways of thinking, which makes them highly innovative and agile; important ingredients for business success and sustainability,” she adds.