South Africa has a youth unemployment crisis, but it also has a preparation crisis. Too many learners leave school without a clear bridge into further study, formal work or self-employment. (Photo: Supplied
The JSE Investment Challenge gives high school learners and university students a virtual R1-million portfolio to invest in JSE-listed shares in a simulated trading environment. Coronation’s Top Investor Challenge: Schools Edition gives high school learners a risk-free way to make investment choices based on future scenarios. The Allan Gray Entrepreneurship Challenge (Agec), which turns 10 this year, uses a 30-minute online business simulation game to introduce pupils to entrepreneurship.
South Africa has a youth unemployment crisis, but it also has a preparation crisis. Too many learners leave school without a clear bridge into further study, formal work or self-employment. The result is not only an income problem. It also creates problems around confidence, decision-making skills and missed opportunities.
Allan Gray Entrepreneurship Challenge
For Charleen Duncan, head of public affairs and communications at the Allan Gray Orbis Foundation, the past decade of the Allan Gray Entrepreneurship Challenge (Agec) has shown that the issue is not a lack of entrepreneurial ability among young people.
“There’s a lot of potential, but there are not a lot of opportunities,” Duncan says.
That is the idea behind Agec, which was launched in 2016 and celebrates its 10th anniversary this year. The programme reaches learners across South Africa, Namibia, Botswana and Eswatini and often attracts more than 21,000 learners and more than 800 teachers annually.
At its simplest, Agec is an online business simulation game. Learners are placed in charge of building and running a small retail business. This year’s theme, Food Frenzy, asks them to make decisions about stock, marketing, staff, ethics, reputational risk and strategy.
It takes about 30 minutes to complete, but learners are encouraged to replay the game to improve their scores and test different approaches. The repetition is part of the learning. In a classroom, a wrong answer can feel final. In a simulation, a bad business decision becomes another round.
Duncan says Agec has shown that pupils from very different backgrounds will engage with entrepreneurship when the opportunity is made accessible.
Entrepreneurship is often treated as something that belongs in a business studies textbook, or as a last resort when formal employment fails. Agec is built on a broader definition. It is not only trying to produce future business owners, but also to teach learners to think differently.
“Entrepreneurship basically teaches you just to think differently. It teaches you that you have agency, that you can identify opportunities and that you can create value,” Duncan says.
That is where Agec starts to overlap with the investment challenges run by the JSE and Coronation. Whether a learner is choosing stock for a virtual shop or deciding how to allocate a virtual portfolio, the lesson is partly about money, but mostly about judgement.
In the JSE Investment Challenge, learners and students have to decide how to invest a virtual R1-million portfolio in JSE-listed shares. The competition, which began on 16 March and closes on 15 September 2026, introduces participants to real market behaviour without exposing them to real losses.
Coronation’s Top Investor Challenge: Schools Edition
Now in its second year, Coronation’s Top Investor Challenge: Schools Edition is open to high school learners across South Africa. Learners participate in teams, receive a virtual pot of money and make investment decisions based on future scenarios presented through short videos. The team whose portfolio grows the most by the end of the challenge wins.
Both competitions are designed to turn markets from something foggy and intimidating into something learners can prod, question and begin to understand.
In an earlier interview with Daily Maverick, Kirshni Totaram, Coronation’s global head of institutional business, said high school was not too early to start teaching young people about money.
“You can never start learning about financial literacy too early,” Totaram said. “The more you talk about money, the earlier you talk about money, about discipline, about budgets, about long-term wealth creation… the easier it is to demystify it.”
The investment challenges teach concepts such as risk, diversification, patience and the difference between short-term noise and information that could affect long-term value. Agec teaches a parallel set of business instincts: when to buy stock, how to market, how to treat staff, how to recover from failure and how to think about reputational risk.
Duncan says those skills are relevant even if learners never start a business.
“In a school environment, you are not taught to take risk. There’s a right and there’s a wrong answer,” she says. “How do we start teaching young people to be job creators?”
Teacher training
Over the past decade, Agec has grown beyond the online competition. It now includes CAPS-aligned lesson plans, teacher training, entrepreneurship clubs, the Startup Shuffle card game and live pitching opportunities.
The teacher component has become one of the most important parts of the model. Agec works with all nine provincial departments of basic education and all five recognised teacher unions in South Africa. It also provides South African Council for Educators-accredited teacher training, allowing educators to earn professional development points while learning how to introduce entrepreneurship concepts in the classroom.
Building that network took time. Duncan says it was a six-year journey to reach the current level of buy-in.
“This is not work that you can do alone,” she says. “You need an ecosystem to do this.”
That ecosystem includes schools, education departments, teacher unions, parents, learners and other organisations working in education. Duncan points out that teachers are already under heavy pressure, with crowded curriculums, administrative demands, resource shortages and very different learner needs in the same classroom.
Inspiring resources
Agec’s lesson plans are intended to reduce that burden rather than add another shiny project to the pile. The programme has lesson plans from Grade 8 to matric, as well as downloadable “print to play” resources. Teachers can also use the Startup Shuffle card game in class or set up entrepreneurship clubs at their schools.
“Teachers are really excited about the fact that we are giving them these resources that they don’t necessarily have,” Duncan says.
The teacher training also allows the programme to stretch further than a once-off competition. Train one teacher, and the resource can live in that classroom for years, she says.
Accessibility has shaped the programme’s design. In its early years, the game could only be played on a laptop or desktop computer. That excluded many of the learners Agec wanted to reach. The programme was redesigned for mobile use and low-data access.
The game now requires only 14MB of data and can be played online or downloaded for offline play.
Ambitions for Africa
Agec has also had to adapt as it moved into other southern African countries. Duncan says the foundation has learnt not to assume that a South African model can simply be dropped into Namibia, Botswana or Eswatini.
“You can’t necessarily take what you’re building in one country and just go and place it in another,” she says.
Local teams and partners have helped adapt the programme to different education systems, relationships and language contexts. Duncan says the long-term dream is to get the game, or a version of it, into classrooms across Africa.
No school competition can fix youth unemployment. A virtual portfolio will not repair South Africa’s weak savings culture on its own, and a 30-minute business simulation will not turn every pupil into an entrepreneur.
However, these programmes do offer a low-risk rehearsal space for adulthood.
Learners can make a poor investment call without losing their pocket money. They can run out of stock in a simulated shop instead of a real one. They can test a business idea, pitch it, rethink it and try again.
How learners and schools can enter
The 2026 Allan Gray Entrepreneurship Challenge is open to high school learners in South Africa, Namibia, Botswana and Eswatini.
Learners can register and play for free at www.theentrepreneurshipchallenge.com. The gameplay competition period runs until the end of July 2026. The game takes about 30 minutes to complete, but learners are encouraged to replay it to improve their scores and strategies. No prior business, accounting or entrepreneurship knowledge is required.
Across South Africa, participants are competing for a total prize pool of R250,000, including learner, teacher and school prizes, as well as Allan Gray Unit Trust investments.
Learners can compete through the Allan Gray High School Game leaderboard. They can also enter the Business Pitch Challenge by submitting a video pitch. The top 10 participants receive coaching and training, while the top three finalists move to the final pitching round. The first-place winner receives R35,000 plus an Allan Gray Unit Trust investment, second place receives R27,000 plus an Allan Gray Unit Trust investment, and third place receives R18,000 plus an Allan Gray Unit Trust investment.
Teachers can also participate in the Business Pitch Challenge through two dedicated educator topics, with winners receiving R25,000 each. Schools are rewarded for learner registrations and participation rates.
The Coronation Top Investor Challenge: Schools Edition is open to all high school learners in South Africa. Learners enter in teams of two to five members, and there is no limit to the number of teams a school may enter. It is free to participate and runs from 1 June to 31 July 2026.
The JSE Investment Challenge is open to high school learners and university students. The 2026 competition started on 16 March and closes on 15 September 2026. Teams receive a virtual R1-million portfolio to invest in JSE-listed shares in a simulated trading environment. DM