A Place-Based Model for Youth Economic Inclusion
Summary
In 2025, Harambee committed to unlocking earning opportunities for 18,000 youth by 2027 through a place-based model that activates local economies and dismantles barriers to youth employment in targeted geographies within South Africa. 72,000 young people will be provided with work-seeker support; access to skills, markets, and capital; and scalable solutions for youth-led self-employment in high-growth informal economy sectors such as logistics, retail, digital, green economy, and township agriculture. Through the South Africa Youth multi-channel platform, Harambee will connect youth to local jobs, skilling interventions including interview preparation and workplace culture integration, and self-employment opportunities while supporting employers to adopt low-barrier hiring practices for inexperienced youth. Harambee will undertake market diagnostics, identify opportunity sectors, determine system blockers, map key stakeholders, and build local coalitions of government, business, and civil society to ensure demand-led and locally embedded solutions aligned to economic development priorities.
Approach
Harambee commits to unlocking earning opportunities for 18,000 youth over 2 years through a place-based model in targeted geographies that activates local economies and dismantles barriers to youth employment. Furthermore, 72,000 young people will be provided with work-seeker support. This will be achieved through four focus areas:
Enable Youth Self-Employment and Micro-Enterprise Pathways:
Harambee will design scalable solutions for youth-led self-employment in high-growth informal economy sectors such as logistics, retail, digital, green economy, and township agriculture – offering access to skills, markets, capital and enterprise support.
Scale Inclusive Hiring via South African (SA) Youth:
Through the SA Youth multi-channel technology platform, Harambee will connect youth to jobs, skilling interventions and self-employment opportunities near where they live, while supporting employers to adopt low-barrier hiring practices for inexperienced youth who are typically excluded from the economy – at no cost to both youth and employers.
Bridge the Work-Readiness Gap:
Harambee will deploy practical content, short learning experiences and behavioral nudges to support interview preparation and workplace culture integration to be delivered through SA Youth and partner networks.
Activate Local Economic Ecosystems:
Harambee will undertake market diagnostics, identify opportunity sectors, determine system blockers, map key stakeholders and build local coalitions of government, business, and civil society to ensure coordinated demand-led and locally embedded solutions, aligned to economic development priorities.
With 14 years of experience, Harambee has supported over 4.5 million youth, enabling more than 1.8 million earning opportunities. Harambee is an anchor partner in the Presidential Youth Employment Intervention, the country’s national multi-sector coordinated programme to address youth unemployment in South Africa. In this capacity, Harambee provides strong digital infrastructure through the SA Youth Platform, labor market data intelligence and deep ecosystem enablement experience to drive systems-level impact.
Action Plan
Stakeholder Mapping (by December 2025) :
Harambee will conduct a comprehensive stakeholder mapping to identify key stakeholders across the private, public and social sectors.
Demand Side Diagnostics (by January 2026) :
Harambee will undertake in-depth research to identify the zone of opportunity for jobs and self-employment ventures, the barriers to be addressed and the coordination required.
Supply Side Interventions (by March 2026) :
Based on the gap analysis, develop solutions to ready youth for identified earning opportunities including market based skilling, readiness for the world of work, mindset shifts, behavior change and scaffolding support particularly for self-employment.
Ecosystem Orchestration (by March 2026) ::
Convene and coordinate identified stakeholders across sectors to strengthen collaboration; align on shared priorities, prototype solutions, implementation plan, monitoring and evaluation; and share learnings.
Pathway Management (by March 2026) :
Through the SA Youth Platform provide ongoing support to youth to enable them to access pathways to jobs, self-employment opportunities and skilling interventions that will allow them to sustain their income, grow their employability and remain productively engaged.
Implementation of targeted solutions commenced by April 2026.
Background
South Africa’s youth unemployment crisis is threatening the social fabric of the country and the stability of its economy. Based on the Quarterly Labor Force Survey, the broad unemployment rate for youth aged 18 – 34 stubbornly remains at 55%, with 9 million young people not in employment, education or training (NEET) . Additionally, Harambee’s data analytics indicate that approximately 1 million youth enter the labor market, of whom an estimated 600,000 are likely to also become NEET. The youth unemployment challenge is exacerbated by low economic growth, a poor education system, and structural barriers like high costs for job searches, which keep young people locked out of participating in the labor market. Analysis of Quarterly Labor Force Survey data indicates that over the past 16 years, gross domestic product (GDP) growth is a necessary but insufficient condition to address youth unemployment. Even when South Africa’s economy has grown, youth have not benefited. Another major problem is that most skilling initiatives are not producing young people that are work-ready with market relevant qualifications and skills – resulting in a demand-supply mismatch.
Young people’s pathways in the economy are not linear. They oscillate through the labor market, falling in and out of economic activity. Therefore, it becomes critical to illuminate to them the next best step; and to make it frictionless for them to transition into that next pathway with the ultimate objective being to keep them productively engaged in the economy, while earning a resilient income. Collective action to unlock all types of earning opportunities is essential. With there being insufficient formal sector jobs to absorb youth, the informal economy is a potential engine of growth. Through coordinated and focused efforts with a coalition of ecosystem partners, Harambee will develop and demonstrate a place-based model to accelerate youth economic inclusion in targeted geographies.
Progress Update
Partnership Opportunities
For those multi-national companies which have operations in South Africa, Harambee would seek to secure from them jobs, self-employment opportunities and skilling interventions for youth in South Africa.
Connection to global philanthropy networks to raise donor funding to finance delivery of the goals.,Harambee will operate the SA Youth Platform to provide young work-seekers free access to search for jobs, skilling interventions and self-employment opportunities in close proximity to where they live. Additionally, through the SA Youth Platform employers and opportunity holders will be connected to engaged youth who can be matched to opportunities based on their incredible talent and potential.
Harambee will also play a critical role in convening and coordinating identified stakeholders across sectors to strengthen collaboration; align on shared priorities, prototype solutions, co-create an implementation plan, develop monitoring and evaluation processes; and share learnings.
Throughout the initiative, Harambee will collate labor market intelligence to inform strategic priorities, influence policy/programming, coordinate investment for optimal impact and produce a playbook for place-based models to accelerate youth economic inclusion – as a tool for replication in other geographies.
At a country level, Harambee will create linkages to the national strategy to address the youth unemployment crisis in South Africa