Empowering youth: the need for financial education in South Africa

WE TEACH our kids how to calculate the angles of a triangle and their way around tectonic plates, yet we don't tell them how they're expected to fund their lives, let alone the 40 years of life after they stop working one day.

- NZWA SHONIWA

While most people won't be able to retire comfortably before the age of 80, perhaps one of the most strategic shifts we can make is to teach financial decision-making and retirement planning in schools. The data from the 2025 Sanlam Benchmark Survey has highlighted that we can’t fix South Africa's retirement crisis overnight, but we can give the next generation a better shot at breaking the cycle of elderly people not being able to retire with ease. That starts in the classroom, with a subject that impacts everyone, but is currently not taught formally or part of the curriculum - Financial Decision Making & Retirement Planning.

It’s time to put financial literacy into the curriculum

At Sanlam Corporate, we are strong on solutions, and something that can’t be ignored is how we need to lobby for meaningful financial education to be integrated into the curriculum at schools. Our data shows that there’s strong support for this in the industry, with nearly 50% of employer funds and 40% of umbrella fund participants in favour, and 64% of total survey respondents saying financial education is ‘very important.