SA youths ‘choose job security instead of entrepreneurship’
TOO many young business people are choosing job security above entrepreneurship, Jon FosterPedley, dean of Henley Business School SA, said yesterday.
He recently spoke at the DHL Tomorrow’s Leaders Convention in SA about how to develop entrepreneurship in SA. He expressed concern about young business people in an interview with Business Day yesterday.
The government has selected entrepreneurship as a job driver in its mission to cut the unemployment rate to 15% by 2020. The rate now hovers at about 25%.
The National Youth Development Agency (NYDA) has been charged by the government to fix up its micro-lending and mentoring programme for small businesses to provide support for young entrepreneurs and, in turn, sustainable employment. The NYDA has a budget of about R400m but has been operating without a board for nearly a full financial year since the term of the last board expired in April last year.
Last month, President Jacob Zuma appointed the new board of the NYDA, with Young Communist League chairman Yershen Pillay taking over the reins as the new board’s chairman.
Mr Foster-Pedley said SA fell behind tremendously in terms of the number of new successful businesses created by youths, and that people in SA were scared to take risks on new enterprises.
They were far too obsessed with career ladders at big, established companies and needed to learn how they could give to their society by pursuing other paths.
“If you look at other develop- ing countries, like Brazil, you will find that young people there are interested in taking on jobs which improve how people live.
“I am not saying that big business does not contribute to society and that it is wrong to work at multinationals, but I just feel that there is a culture in SA whereby the youth are pursuing jobs just to get paid high salaries.”
He said skilled South Africans may be hesitant to start their own businesses young or to work for small, less-known firms because of the competition to be employed and stigma around job security offered by SA’s employers.
“When unemployment is so high, of course skilled people will be hesitant to take risks. They may pursue accounting jobs at the big four firms because their employment will be secure there at least for a while. But if we really want to develop our private sector, we need our talented people to pursue different kinds of careers and take risks,” he said.
“In SA, and perhaps in Africa generally, we mine for mineral resources, but our greatest resources are our people.”