Southern Africa Expands Youth Employment Programs Amid High Unemployment

Youth unemployment remains severe in Southern Africa. In Eswatini, the unemployment rate for people aged 15‑35 exceeds 53%, and the formal sector creates only about 1,000 jobs a year for roughly 25,000 new entrants. The government and partners are scaling up training, financing and entrepreneurship schemes, including the World Bank‑backed Eswatini Youth Employment Opportunities Project (EYEOP) that targets 30,000 young people, half of them women, with loans up to 200,000 emalangeni and digital pathways through the YOMA platform.

In South Africa, Deputy Minister in the Presidency Nonceba Mhlauli urged young people to seize government‑supported education and job opportunities at the Youth in Action Expo. She highlighted the growth of the expo, the role of Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) as a primary pathway, and the continued impact of the Presidential Youth Employment Intervention, which has facilitated more than 2.5 million earning opportunities since 2020. In the first quarter of 2026 alone, 155,161 new opportunities were created, with over 70 % accessed by young women.