Youth unemployment is at 61%. One organisation says South Africa is intervening too late.
Katlego Sekhu
South Africa’s youth unemployment crisis is well documented. According to StatsSA’s Q1 2026 report, 4.7 million young people between the ages of 15 and 34 are unemployed, with a further 10.6 million outside the labour force entirely. The formal job market created a net 130,000 jobs last year. The numbers do not add up.
But one organisation argues the conversation is starting in the wrong place. Kaya BIZ with Gugulethu Mfuphi spoke to Marc Lubner, Group CEO at Afrika Tikkun, to find out why he believes South Africa will not solve its jobs crisis until it rethinks where intervention begins.
The problem starts earlier than most people think
Lubner’s argument is disarmingly simple. If South Africa wants productive adults entering the working environment, it has to start with children, not graduates.
Afrika Tikkun’s cradle-to-career 360 degree model begins with early childhood development centres built inside township communities, staffed by people from those same communities. It moves through after-school programmes, career guidance, specialised skills training, and ultimately into job placement, in both the formal and informal sectors.
“Our philosophy is a very simple one,” says Lubner. “If you want a productive adult going into the working environment, then you have to start very early on in a child’s development.”
The model addresses what children are not learning inside the classroom, self-belief, career awareness, entrepreneurial thinking, and how to use technology as a competitive advantage.
From seedlings to agripreneurs
One of the more striking elements of the model is its agricultural pathway. It begins in preschool with what Lubner calls a garden-to-kindergarten programme, where children grow vegetables and learn to respect life through nurturing a plant.
Post-school leavers can then train for a year at Afrika Tikkun’s farm in Diepsloot on biodynamic farming methods. More recently, the organisation has introduced a mobile agri-tech unit, a self-contained ecosystem producing both crops and eggs, which can be learned in four months and generate between R10,000 and R12,000 a month.
“You have almost an ecosystem in a box,” says Lubner.
Rethinking learnerships and corporate responsibility
Lubner is direct about where the current system is failing. Too many corporates, he argues, are treating government incentive programmes like the YES for Youth initiative as a tick-box exercise rather than a genuine pipeline investment.
His proposal is a three-way partnership: civil society develops the skills, government funds the opportunity, and corporates commit upfront to what competencies they actually need, and to employing or supporting young people once learnerships end.
“We can’t just keep doing the same thing and hopefully it’s going to be different,” he says.
South Africa’s youth are not the problem, Lubner insists. They are tech-savvy, resourceful and ambitious. The missing link is a system that meets them early enough, and honestly enough, to give that ambition somewhere to go.
To hear the full discussion, listen to the podcast.
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