BANKSETA AR 31 AUGUST

PERFORMANCE INFORMATION

Youth Development South Africa’s high rate of youth unemployment makes the work of the Youth Development Department of great importance. Through its learnerships, internships, bursaries and skills development projects, the BANKSETA is making a valuable contribution towards youth employability, thereby addressing poverty and unemployment in South Africa. This is evident from the employment rate from its flagship programmes of approximately 65 per cent. During 2021/22, BANKSETA continued its learnerships in the forms of the Letsema project for post-matriculants (116) and the Kuyasa project for postgraduates. Kuyasa has two streams: one involves generic management (320) in which learners are groomed as junior managers, while the other is a more specialist programme lasting 12 months and focusing on business analysis (47). During the year, 483 learners enrolled in the programme (target: 482). Planning for the new national internship programme has begun and will be rolled out in the new financial year, in response to the President’s initiative for reconstruction and recovery. This will fund internships for 4 552 young people. A specific emphasis will be on all categories of Internship and the initiative will reach beyond the banking sector to business in general. The cyber security programme achieved two intakes for 2021/22 of 250 learners, all of whom were placed in the banking and other sectors, such as education and IT. The workplace experience programme experienced a gradual recovery following the negative impact on work placements caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

The employers’ funding process for learners on PIVOTAL programmes was implemented too late in 2021/22 for its target to be achieved. BANKSETA will allocate funding earlier in 2022/23 to improve on this programme’s implementation. Under the PIVOTAL grant funding window for the unemployed, that includes employer driven learnerships, internships, skills programmes and bursaries, 1 031 (target: 720) learners were enrolled for the programme. In addition to the funding made available in 2021/22, some programmes for 2020/21 were only implemented in this year, resulting in the target being exceeded. The department’s plans for the new financial year include programmes that are more IT based.

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PART B: PERFORMANCE INFORMATION | BANKSETA ANNUAL REPORT 2021/22