Without the voices of the youth, policies risk sounding good on paper but failing in practice. (Photo: EPA-EFE / Rajat Gupta) 
Young people, their social problems and their economic value are mentioned in political speeches, policies and declarations — but as a young person and activist I am aware that we are rarely in the rooms where decisions are made.
Without our voices, policies risk sounding good on paper but failing in practice. In August 2025, when the G20 labour and employment ministers met in South Africa to sign the Fancourt Declaration, youth were once again spoken about but hardly spoken with.
Don’t get me wrong, the declaration has all the right rhetoric: it recognises youth as drivers of sustainable growth and promises to reduce the number of young people who are not in employment, education or training by 5% by 2030. It also pledges to boost youth skills for the green, digital and care economies, improve technical training and expand entrepreneurship opportunities.
On paper, it reads like a great plan. But here’s the uncomfortable truth: many young people weren’t in the room when it was formulated. They didn’t set the agenda. And young people probably won’t be directly involved in deciding how these plans are delivered, and they won’t be empowered to demand accountability if nothing comes of it.
How do I know this? Because it’s happened before: the 2015 Antalya Goal once promised a 15% cut in SA’s not in employment, education or training rate by 2025, only to be replaced this year with a 5% target.
At the time, 10 years ago, 31.5% of South Africans aged 15-24 and 38% of those aged 15-34 were not in employment, education or training. A decade later, these figures have gone up, not down.
While the Youth 20 (Y20) forum took place alongside the G20 as an “engagement group” created to bring diverse voices into the process through independent input, this forum remains separate from the main Sherpa and Finance tracks, where policy decisions are effectively made. Civil society and youth leaders can contribute, but their proposals are non-binding and depend entirely on political will.
A distance that feels impossible to cross
In South Africa, young people aged 15-34 are the most vulnerable to unemployment, with nearly six in 10 unemployed young people having never had a job before. Young black women are more likely than men to be unemployed regardless of their level of education.
In a country where the median age is 28 years, young people’s struggles are everywhere: someone’s sibling working a part-time job while applying for permanent work; a young woman forced out of the labour market because childcare is unaffordable; or the neighbour’s cousin who has given up hope of finding work altogether. Youth Capital’s job-seeking research shows that eight in 10 young people have to choose between buying food and looking for work.
Despite this, young people keep showing up. For the latest phase of the Basic Education Employment Initiative, 1.9 million young people applied for the 200,000 positions available. Their determination is inspiring — but we shouldn’t romanticise it. Young people want work, and their personal resilience must be matched with structural support.
From commitment to implementation
Leaders need to formulate practical steps that move from commitment to implementation, closing the gap between policy and lived realities. They can start by giving Y20 more than just an advisory role; its recommendations must be integrated into the G20 process with mechanisms that make them binding. Next, the room needs to be bigger — ordinary young people must be able to participate, because lived experience is as valuable as technical or academic expertise.
For South Africa to meet its target of reducing the not in employment, education or training rate, public employment programmes that provide young people with their first work experience must be scaled. At the same time, the transition from education to work must be simplified by aligning training and Technical and Vocational Education and Training pipelines with demand in “sunrise sectors” such as agriculture, global business services, early childhood development and the green economy. And young people need real support when they pursue self-employment. Without these interventions, the not in employment, education or training rate will remain stubbornly high, and the cycle of promises without delivery will continue.
The G20 is an important stage on local turf. If it delivers real, tangible change for young people, it’s a space worth building on. But right now, the outcomes of these discussions rarely reach the ground.
If the G20 wants to be taken seriously by South Africa’s youth, it must stop treating them as beneficiaries and photo opportunities and start treating them as partners with power. Until then, every promise risks being just another empty headline — and young people deserve more than headlines, they deserve action. DM
Sibabalwe Nobandla is a young South African working at Youth Capital, a campaign advocating for policy change to solve unemployment. He writes about the lived realities of young people and the policies that shape their futures.