SA needs innovative employment proposition

Jobs, jobs and more jobs is what our economy needs to show that the economic tide is truly changing for the better. For a number of years before even the recession - which South Africa and the rest of the world seems to be coming out of - has been experiencing unemployment rate above the 20% mark. According to Stats SA’s Labour Force Report for the third quarter of 2009, South Africa’s unemployment rate stood at 24.5%, with the Black population showing the highest unemployment rate (28.8%) and the White population, the least unemployment (4.8). Looking forward renewed hopes for GDP growth will play a big part in creating the demand that will help create new jobs. However South Africa would need an exponential annual GDP growth in order to create the number of jobs required to make a sizable dent into such a high unemployment rate. As such, the Government of President Zuma needs to devise a bold plan aimed at creating hundreds of thousands of jobs annually. To be sure, government has through its various infrastructure investment projects created a thousands of jobs and put many South Africans to work, think the Bus Rapid Transport system (BRT), think the Gautrain and of course don’t forget the multitude of stadia that have been built or renovated in support of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, among a host of crucial state-funded initiatives. While these programme tend to generate a huge number of direct employment opportunities, such opportunities often tend to fall away once the projects reach completion. What is therefore required are government projects which generate sustainable direct and indirect jobs. One of the most effective ways to create long-term sustainable jobs, government ought review the education system with a view to developing and producing more graduates with qualifications in the hard sciences (as stated in my previous blogs). Indeed in an article he published in “The World in 2010” a magazine published annually by “The Economist”, President Jacob Zuma openly acknowledges that education holds the key to unlocking South Africa’s economic potential, stating that, “Unemployment remains stubbornly high, in part because of our narrow skills base. It is for this reason that my administration is stressing education in plans for the next five years”. Asian economies used education as means to change their economic fortunes to great success and President Zuma and his Cabinet will need to find innovative ways of creating sustainable jobs in order to deal with unemployment, once and for all. Some of the innovative job creation ideas government needs to consider include: closer collaboration on job-creation strategy between government the private sector and society in general. To this end, perhaps the role and mandate of the National Economic Development and Labour Council (NEDLAC) ought to be reviewed; creation of an education fund aimed at creating more graduates with qualifications in the hard sciences as a key driver of exponential GDP growth; position South Africa as a leader in innovation and design of solution for a greener production technologies which could be exported to other countries. Whatever happens, South Africa needs to shy away from a conventional approach to solving the unemployment problem, the situation is simply too dire not to think outside the box.