Communications minister Solly Malatsi.
A commitment by industry stakeholders aims to place 500 000 young people in in-demand digital jobs by 2034, to address SA’s digital skills gap, amid the rising youth unemployment rate.
The commitment was announced this week at the CollectiveXChange 2026 conference, through a collaborative initiative involving Collective X, Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator, the Youth Employment Service, Business Unity South Africa, the Presidential Youth Employment Intervention, the Human Resource Development Council of South Africa and the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies.
The conference, where communications minister Solly Malatsi addressed more than 350 senior leaders on the need to improve young people’s access to employment opportunities, concluded with a manifesto setting out the 2034 employment target.
It comes against a backdrop of nearly 90 000 unfilled information and communications technology positions in SA, according to Collective X’s 2025 research on digital job demand.
According to Malatsi, SA needs to address the disconnect between available jobs and young people struggling to secure their first opportunity in the workplace.
“We all agree that young people need work experience. The reality indicates that very few of us want to be the ones giving it to them. That gap between agreement and action is where most of our digital skills effort goes to die, and it is what I want to talk about today.
“The government’s revised Digital Economy Masterplan, released in July, estimates that the digital economy could create at least one million jobs over the next decade, spanning traditional employment and gig work.
“The sector currently contributes between 7% and 8% of gross domestic product, with the potential to exceed 15% if the right policies, investment and partnerships are in place,” he noted.
According to Collective X, the 500 000 digital jobs target will be achieved through demand-led digital skills training, employer partnerships, work-integrated learning, apprenticeships and structured workplace placements that connect young people to in-demand roles.
According to Statistics SA, five million young people aged 15 to 34 were unemployed in the second quarter of 2026, up by 264 000 from the previous quarter. The youth unemployment rate rose to 47.4%, it says.
Malatsi argued that expanding digital infrastructure and growing the technology sector would not be enough if young people could not access the experience required to enter the workforce.
However, workforce development remained a critical obstacle to realising that potential, he asserted.
“The harder problem is people. A masterplan without a workforce is a well-designed plan with nobody to execute it. When we think of an inclusive digital economy and digital transformation, artificial intelligence, cloud computing and data centres are no longer seen as separate components of the digital economy – digital coding skills are part of that equation.”
Malatsi challenged employers to reconsider how they design entry-level positions, particularly where candidates are expected to have experience before being given an opportunity to gain it.
“If a role is entry-level, why not design it for someone who has never done it? If experience matters, and I accept that it does, then build the route by which a young person gets it: a work-integrated learning programme, an apprenticeship, a structured placement with a real mentor and real work,” he continued.
The minister called for digital training initiatives to be assessed according to their employment outcomes rather than the number of people who enrol or complete courses.
According to the Digital Economy Masterplan, an estimated 28 000 testing and application development jobs have been outsourced by South African companies to foreign markets, even as local graduates struggle to find work.
Malatsi said government, businesses and training providers needed to work together to connect available opportunities with local talent.
“Our strategic plan commits the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies to demand-led digital skills. Demand-led should mean that the employer's needs come first and the training is shaped to meet it. In practice, we have too often designed the course, filled the classroom, handed out the certificates and hoped that a job would be waiting at the end. Hope is not a pipeline.”
He also called for the formal recognition of micro-credentials, arguing that short courses can provide valuable skills that are not always adequately recognised by the qualifications system.
Malatsi said the state had a role in creating conditions for businesses and individuals to grow, including a predictable policy environment.
“Government carries part of the blame for that, but government can’t and shouldn’t create all the solutions. We must ensure we create an environment in which organisations and individuals can grow, in which the ease of doing business is prioritised and in which the policy outlook is certain and largely predictable. We must be an enabling state, not a controlling one.”