OPINION: Four points that need attention to combat SA's unemployment.

The co-chairperson of Global Entrepreneurship Network,
Kizito Okechukwu. I Supplied

JOHANNESBURG - As Statistics South Africa (StatsSA) released its report last week, I was sitting with Dr Pali Lehohla, the former statistician-general of South Africa, and the question we kept asking ourselves was: “What has gone wrong?” Not "what could go wrong?" as the well-known Santam insurance TV commercial asks.

StatsSA revealed that our unemployment rate increased from 27.1 to 27.6percent while, in parallel, a Time magazine piece earlier this month stated that our society is the most unequal in the world.

So, to try and decipher what exactly went wrong, I compiled a few scenarios of what I think happened - and what we could do to solve this predicament.

To set a back story, South Africa prides itself on having some of the best policies and regulations in the world.

South Africa has a plethora of institutions - estimated at more than 400 - mandated or involved in creating jobs and supporting the growth of businesses, such as the Small Enterprise Finance Agency, the Small Enterprise Development Agency, the Department of Trade and Industry, the Industrial Development Corporation, the National Empowerment Fund, the Technology Innovation Agency, Provincial Local Economic Development Agencies, incubators, accelerators and various other private sector enterprise development initiatives and the list goes on and on.

Full story at IOL.

By Kizito Okechukwu.