The 28 high-impact entrepreneurs in Endeavor SA’s portfolio are 95% tech or tech-enabled and employed 11,525 people at the end of 2020
One of SA’s biggest immediate challenges is high unemployment, particularly among its youth, yet the gap between the demand and supply of digital skills continues to increase.
Furthermore, young people aged 15 to 34 are hardest hit since they lack work experience and skills. In a post Covid-19 world this trend is even more pronounced, with businesses being propelled into an accelerated wave of digitisation and a “low touch” economy, meaning the demand and thus gap for a digital skills workforce is wider than ever.
The 28 high-impact entrepreneurs in Endeavor SA’s portfolio are 95% tech or tech-enabled and collectively employed 11,525 people at the end of 2020. Furthermore, these entrepreneurs have created a further 1,200 jobs to August 2021 and have continued to demonstrate strong job growth despite weak macros, with an annual growth rate of 27% from 2017 to 2020.
The release of the latest unemployment rate should be a wake-up call. We are already over-reliant on government grants and our state coffers are empty, so there is an urgent need to refocus on what is working. We need to be thoughtful and invest in those areas of the economy that will create jobs for the future and allow us to compete on a relevant and global scale. We have limited resources to use and we need to use them wisely.
There are only a few hundred SA businesses in this bracket, while there should be hundreds of thousands. There is simply not enough support at the policy level for high-growth tech-enabled entrepreneurs, which is where pro-bono organisations such as ours step in, to radically mobilise and maximise job creation.
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