'Entrepreneurship is the answer'

Business leaders call for more investment to help youths start businesses and to tackle joblessness

- Aarti Bhana

Investing in young people to help them become entrepreneurs is one of the ways corporate social initiatives can tackle South Africa's youth unemployment crisis, business leaders said this week.

They spoke as data from Statistics South Africa showed that the unemployment rate had increased to 32.9% in the first quarter of the year from 31.9% in the last quarter of last year. Youth unemployment rose to 46.1% from 44.6%.

The best way to solve unemployment is by supporting small businesses and through entrepreneurship, said Tarry Blecher, chairperson of the department of education's E3 (entrepreneurship, employability and education) initiative.

"People think jobs are all in the big companies, in banks or in Telkom or in Cell C — that's not true. The vast majority of jobs in the country are in small businesses," Blecher told a business conference in Johannesburg.

The 2023 — 2024 Global Entrepreneurship Monitor report showed that the quality of South Africa's overall entrepreneurial environment fell in 2023. The score had improved from 3.7 in 2021 to 4.1 in 2022, but retreated to 3.6 the following year, the third-lowest level among the 49 participating economies.