JOHANNESBURG - The high rate of unemployment in the country reflects the lack of critical skills within the youth according to the employment and labour department.
READ: Unemployment decreases by 0.3% in second quarter of 2023
South Africa tops the list of countries with the highest unemployment rate in the world.
A whopping 33% of its workforce has no jobs.
Employment and Labour Minister, Thulani Nxesi, has been holding meetings with his BRICS counterparts.
Nxesi says the country will focus more on training the youth to have critical skills.
He said, "we are talking about the skills gap and economists have long said the unemployment in this country I structural which means it is linked to the skills. Therefore the issue of skills training is very, very central, we will be exchanging information, we will be exchanging knowledge and programmes which are going to skill our people especially in certain critical areas, there is a list of about hundred critical skills which we do not have, which we determined by Minister Nzimande and Minister of Home Affairs."
"The key issue is about ‘do they have artisanal skills?”, that’s the key issue which you might need now in the industry."