Youth shaping the future of work: skills, innovation and opportunity

The conversation around youth employment is changing. It is no longer about waiting for jobs to open up. It is about how fast institutions can adapt to the speed at which young people are already building new forms of work for themselves. That tension between readiness and reality set the tone for a wide ranging discussion hosted by the British Council, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and Youth 20 South Africa under South Africa’s G20 Presidency.

- By Hasina Kathrada

The webinar, titled Youth Shaping the Future of Work: Skills, Innovation and Opportunity, formed part of the G20 legacy series that is looking to build lasting frameworks around employment, digital inclusion and youth leadership. The session brought together a mix of perspectives from across government, global development and the creative economy. Speakers included British Council directors George Barrett, Richard Garrett and Farai Ncube, UNDP's Phumla Hlati and Y20 delegate Nyiko Mgiba, with moderation by Youth 20 South Africa Sherpa Levi Singh.

Singh opened by commending South Africa's G20 Presidency for ensuring that the Nelson Mandela Bay targets towards reducing G20 member state youth not in education, employment or training (NEET) rates were included in the leaders declaration adopted at the recently concluded G20 Leaders Summit in Johannesburg. This is a position the Y20 South Africa has supported over the course of South Africa's Presidency.

Mgiba took an unsparing look at Africa’s labour landscape. “We meet in a moment where young people are navigating the most dramatic transformation of the world of work in modern history,” he said. Digitalisation, the climate transition and changing global economies are rewriting what it means to be employable. Africa, he reminded the audience, needs between fifteen and twenty million jobs every year, but is producing only about three million. By 2030, seventy percent of new jobs worldwide will require advanced digital skills, yet too few young Africans have access to them.