The South African private sector makes an essential contribution to both the economy and society of South Africa. It plays a critical role in creating jobs, developing skills and through innovation, influence and enterprise, it keeps our economy alive. While it has to be flexible and creative in dealing with many infrastructure, economic and political hurdles, if we don’t act fast, human capital might be one of our biggest future challenges.
With the Department of Transport’s request for information in a quest to revitalise South Africa’s ailing logistics sector through private sector participation (read more), it is clear that there is a new appreciation for the role the private sector has to play. The private sector is hindered by shortcomings in the local infrastructure, regulatory hurdles, policy uncertainty and economic instability, but it doesn’t end here. We can’t ignore the big picture – issues such as unemployment, poverty and inequality. In the private sector we must take responsibility for our own viability, but our investments cannot only be focused on our company’s needs. For future success, we need a much broader perspective. At some stage we will have to rely on younger generations, but can we?
I am reaching a stage of my life where retirement is on the menu and this means that my generation are in the process of giving over to a new, younger generation. Never before have I realised how important it is to have competent successors. We complain about the Millennials and the Gen Z’s because we often do not understand their way of thinking, but the truth is that we have a role to play to ensure that we have confident, capable and responsible young people in our society.
We can argue that it is government’s responsibility to ensure its youth is cared for and invested in, but we know it takes more than that. Like the private sector’s important contribution in the economy, we also have a very important role to play in the development of younger generations as they will be the ones to take our businesses and our country forward.
When it comes to the needs of young people we have to get involved and we have to work together in doing so. This was very clear from an Inceba Trust event focusing on early childhood development that I attended earlier this week. It is easy to regard what they do as charity work, but it is much more than this. They invest time and effort into young children to lay a proper groundwork for our future nation. And while private sector expertise might be more finance or business focused, I realised that it is at this level we can (and must) make a difference.
Yes, we can innovate and empower and employ within our own sectors, but to ensure real staying power and to ascertain that what we do will outlast the current generation of leaders and result in a legacy for our country, we need to have a long-term vision. We have to look at who will take our companies and economy forward in the next twenty or thirty years. Will we have the human capital to do this?
This seems unlikely when we look at the current situation in South Africa. The South African Early Childhood Review 2024 paints a sobering picture:
- Nearly 40% of children under six live in households below the food poverty line, and half a million more children are at serious risk of malnutrition than before the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Stunting, a result of chronic undernutrition, affects 1 in 4 children under five. This condition leads to lifelong consequences, including poor educational outcomes and reduced economic productivity.
- Approximately 15 million children aged three to five are not enrolled in any early learning programme, primarily due to poverty.
It is in all of our best interest to ensure the potential of our youngest generation does not get lost. We are all talking about collaboration and we even have a government of national unity, but we often talk more than we do. We have reached a critical stage where we need more than good intentions. We need implementation – in a bold and unwavering way. We need to raise a generation of skilled and capable adults that can play a positive and productive role in our communities. To do that we have to start right at the beginning and ensure that our kids are not neglected during those first formative five years of their lives. Without proper stimulation, nutrition, care and support, young children will be on the backfoot from their first day of school.
Trusts and initiatives are doing a lot of work and going to great lengths, but they need support. The private sector can offer its support because it is serious about the plight of South African kids, but it doesn’t even have to be an altruistic decision. Private sector business owners know that they have only themselves to rely on and therefore they have to get involved with the people who will have to take their businesses into the future.