More than half of South Africans aged eighteen to thirty-four are unemployed. The number is even higher for Black women. Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator is a women-led nonprofit working to break down barriers to employment.
One million young South Africans enter the labor market every year, but two-thirds are not in education, employment, or training within a year.
Young people have to navigate systemic barriers in pursuit of employment, including jobless growth, inadequate education systems, poor visibility of income earning opportunities, and high job search costs.
Women also face gender discrimination, misogyny, and violence, and Black women are particularly affected, with even higher unemployment rates than their peers.
Long-term unemployment in youth increases the likelihood of unemployment later in life, with lasting effects on poverty levels, health, and educational attainment.
Harambee’s approach
Harambee is a women-led nonprofit working to unlock jobs and break down barriers to youth employment in South Africa.
Harambee is playing a central role in South Africa’s national efforts to expand opportunities, improve visibility, match youth to suitable opportunities, and reduce major costs and barriers to employment.
With Co-Impact’s support, Harambee’s goal is to transform the work-seeking experience for at
least three million young South Africans by 2025. Reduced costs and improved work opportunities
will provide at least one million disadvantaged youth — over 60% of whom will be women — with
higher net incomes.
Harambee’s impact
With our support, Harambee has achieved the following so far:
People-level outcomes
Improved the work-seeking journey of over two million additional youth (66% women) via the SA Youth National Pathway Management Network platform, totalling to over 4 million youth supported since its launch.
Saved youth an estimated $68 million in avoided transportation costs by matching them to local jobs.
Connected youth to more than 876,000 work opportunities across the private, public, and informal employment sectors, for a total of over 1.4 million since the platform launched with approximately $1.4 billion in income earned by youth.
Systems-level outcomes
Harambee’s SA Youth has been officially adopted and funded by South Africa’s government as the core national platform to support youth in their work-seeking and pathway management. To date it has been used by over 1,900 private sector partners, nearly 400 CSO providers and multiple government units.
Supported 10 private sector industry intermediary bodies in developing and implementing strategies to increase the number of available jobs, and/or make jobs more available to South African youth.
Organization-level outcomes
Strengthened skills to support government relations, partnerships, and impact measurement.
Implemented a learning agenda to test and refine the organization’s strategy.
Learn more about Harambee in this two-pager and infographic.
