ABSTRACT
This chapter takes up the issue of the youth in the country’s economy. We provide an overview of the challenges facing sub-Saharan African countries in general with regard to the structural transformation of their economies from low-growth, low-productivity trajectories to trajectories of high growth and high productivity as a means of creating employment for the region’s teeming youth in particular. Among the key challenges identified are the volatilities that characterise these economies, weak higher educational systems, and the annual oversupply of labour as a result of the very high fertility levels that prevail in the region. As far as South Africa is concerned, we look at the performance of youth in both the formal and informal sectors of the economy and conclude that like every socio-economic resource in the society, there are variations in the unemployment and labour force participation rates with regard to race/ethnicity, class, gender, age cohort, residence, and province.
