ROUNDTABLE ENGAGEMENT TO LOOK AT WAYS OF MOVING YOUTH SOCIAL RELIEF OF DISTRESS RECIPIENTS FROM DEPENDENCY TO ECONOMIC SELF-SUFFICIENCY

• The National Development Agency will be hosting a roundtable engagement to find ways of helping young people become economically self-sufficient.
• The theme for the discussions is “Targeting social grants recipients for poverty eradication initiatives”.
• At the end of the process the agency plans to see the adoption of a declaration by the stakeholders for a collaboration to ensure the successful execution of this vision.

The National Development Agency will be hosting a multi-stakeholder roundtable on 6 March 2025 in Johannesburg to find ways to help young people move beyond relying on social relief of distress and becoming self-sufficient economically.

Studies indicate that social grants alone are insufficient in enabling long-term economic mobility as recipients continue to face challenges such as skills and educational deficiencies, barriers to entrepreneurship, as well as economic exclusion, developmental opportunities and inequality.

The roundtable comes at a time when South Africa continues to grapple with high unemployment rates, particularly among the youth. Youth unemployment – the percentage of young people actively looking for work but unable to find it – sat at 45,5% in 2024, according to a Statistics South Africa (StatsSA) report released on 27 February 2025 on The Social Profile of the Youth, 2014-2024.

To mitigate extreme poverty, the government introduced the Social Relief of Distress, a temporary financial relief mechanism currently set at R370 per month.

However, this amount falls significantly below the Food Poverty Line as defined by StatsSA at R796, making it insufficient to meet basic nutritional needs.

The National Development Agency, which is mandated to contribute towards the eradication of poverty, is seeking inputs from other strategic partners through hosting the roundtable.

Panellists include representatives from the Presidency, the South African Social Security Agency, the United National Development Programme, the Young African Entrepreneurs Institute, and the Small Business Enterprise Development and Finance Agency.

Through this event and others to follow, the National Development Agency needs to profile social relief of distress recipients. It will be examining where they are across the country and their skills level.

Once this has been done, they will be provided with entrepreneurial opportunities or linked to economic opportunities, and those who need new skills will be trained.

There will be a pool of strategic partners to assist with entrepreneurship opportunities and an alignment with other initiatives around grants beneficiaries.

The event is an inclusive initiative that will consider other endeavours already happening around this area of work.

Under the theme “Targeting social grants recipients for poverty eradication initiatives” this engagement will culminate in the adoption of a declaration by multi-stakeholders for collaboration to ensure the successful execution of this vision that will link social relief of distress recipients to sustainable livelihoods.