Youth Unemployment Scenarios: South Africa in 2040

This book examines the factors driving youth unemployment in South Africa, exploring potential future outcomes of its mass unemployment, and offering a variety of strategies to avoid an impending crisis in the country.

Utilizing scenario analysis rooted in complex systems theory while building on statistical and fi eld research, the author illustrates four possible future states of youth employment in South Africa in the year 2040. This includes the South African version of the Arab Spring, where young people riot or agitate for extreme political and social change because of a belief that access to education and jobs is only possible through social status or corruption (Spring), fair access to a high number of jobs supported by Chinese interventions (Summer), a technology- driven decline in the number of jobs where merit- based access for youth is granted (Fall), and the collapse of the economy, with the economy collapsing and youth becoming increasingly desperate (Winter). The author then presents five strategies to fight youth unemployment, including training of youth to start businesses, stimulating small- and medium- sized enterprises, and sending unemployed youth abroad for skills development and to where their labour is needed.

This book will be of interest to scholars of South African politics and economics, labour economics and youth studies, and readers with an interest in tackling youth unemployment independent of the country.

Maximilian Matschke was born and raised in Munich, Germany. He attained a Bachelor’s degree and a Master’s degree in Technology and Management from the Technical University in Munich, and subsequently completed an Honours degree in Technology Management, spending a term abroad at Columbia Business School in New York, and doing internships in Germany, Singapore, China, and Spain. Max started three social ventures, all addressing the issue of youth employment. The first of these, founded in 2011, was a student-run consulting firm in Johannesburg, The Consulting Academy Johannesburg, which later expanded to Cape Town, Nairobi, and Guadalajara. The second was an entrepreneurship boot camp for unemployed youth, which was successfully piloted and used as a base for a train-the-trainer approach. The third, uNowanga, is an upskilling initiative done in collaboration with the international charity, St John, South Africa. It is a programme to send unemployed youth from South Africa to Germany to train as nurses. He interrupted his career in consulting to pursue a doctorate on youth employment in South Africa. The resulting PhD formed the basis for this book.