The Jobs Fund and its potential job-enabling role for many sectors in South Africa

In recent weeks I have several engagements with fellow HRD and HR professionals, in which the topic of the Jobs Fund has arisen. I thought that perhaps for our members it may be a great idea to introduce the Jobs Fund for your potential interest. The objective of the Jobs Fund is to co-finance projects by public, private and non-govermental organisations that will significantly contribute to job creation. This involves the use of public money to catalyse innovation and investment on behalf of a range of economic stakeholders in activities which contribute directly to enhanced employment creation in South Africa.

To address the challenge of unemployment, South Africa requires high rates of sustained economic growth. South Africa’s macro-economic policy environment, infrastructure asset base, schooling system and regulatory frameworks are all key to growth. However, improving and reforming these factors is a long-term process. 

The Jobs Fund does not intend to tackle these long-term, structural causes of low growth and unemployment on its own. Numerous government initiatives are already tasked with parts of that challenge. Nor does the Jobs Fund aim to replicate or substitute these initiatives; rather it presents an opportunity to complement these efforts with limited and short-term funding interventions. 

These funding interventions will seek to overcome some of the barriers to job creation that have been identified. Some of these relate to demand for labour, some to the supply of labour and some to the broader institutional environment. 

The Jobs Fund has been designed specifically to overcome these barriers by providing public funding through four “funding windows” i.e. Enterprise Development; Infrastructure Investment; Support for Work Seekers and Institutional Capacity Building

My involvement with the Jobs Fund goes back to 2011, in which we were approached to participate in a Jobs Fund project in the environmental and biodiversity sectors.

This sector-led approach in my view has the potential to eclipse the staid, overly-politicized and bureaucratic SETA funding and project approaches. DHET, the NSF and the SETA's could really learn allot from the Development Bank and National Treasury approach.

In early 2014 I am happy to say that the project is going well and in fact has approximately 800 interns (incubants) hosted in a variety of workplaces on a two and half year work-integrated learning project. The benefits to our organisation have been quite significant and we have found that further opportunities for placement for these amazing individuals is apparent. In comparison to the SETA-based learnership programmes the Jobs Fund approach is far more focused on innovation and the attainment of job-creation objectives, whereas much of the learnership environment is still constrained or overly focused on quality assurance of learning provision and assessment. With the additional constraints in hybrid QCTO/SETA management and resources, this is often exacerbated even further (although there have been some improvements in some of the SETA's). 

The Jobs Fund also attempts to emphasise that partner and host organisations must leverage their strengths in the types of interventions, support and programmatic activities that they deliver to grow their interns, allowing for a more integrated and flexible approach around using accredited and non-accredited interventions in the development process. These learnings and the project management approach of the Development Bank has been quite refreshing for me to work with and have certainly invigorated my view of a quite monolithic and sluggish occupational-education and training system. 

I would really be interested in hearing from other Skills-Universe members their thoughts on a Jobs-oriented approach versus a skills development approach, in fact any comments or other ideas would be welcome. Below is the link for your interest. 

http://www.jobsfund.org.za/