Department of Economic Development

On 18 April 2013, a 2000 strong crowd of young people cheered as representativesfrom Government and social partners signed the Youth Employment Accord at Hector Pieterson Memorial in Soweto.The Accord sets out the joint commitment to prioritise youth employment and skillsdevelopment. This booklet contains the text of the Accord.The Accord is one in a series of social pacts that are intended to help achieve the New Growth Path goal of five million new jobs by 2020.The parties will now work together to implement the Accord and report on their progress on a regular basis.

Government recently adopted the New Growth Path (NGP) as the framework for economic policy and the driver of the country’s jobs strategy. This booklet is one in a series of publications on the New Growth Path. This booklet has been produced as a public information resource. It is intended to help shop stewards, business representatives and government officials to communicate the contents of theNGP to a wider audience. The New Growth Path involved substantial work in government. A summary of the work has been released as the New GrowthPath: Framework. The text of this document is reproduced in this booklet, which is the second edition of the publication. The purpose of the series is to stimulate a constructive discussion about the country’s economic priorities in order to identify actions that the private sector, organised labour and government can undertake jointly and in their respective areas and to build support for strong partnerships in the society to address the jobs and economic challenges.

Representatives of business, organised labour, the community constituency and government have agreed to partnerships to achieving the New Growth Path target of five million new jobs by 2020. The parties agree that action and implementation should be a hallmark of the partnership, with constituencies identifying areas where they can make firm commitments as well as identifying actions that other constituencies would need to undertake to do in order for the broad goals of the New Growth Path to be achieved. The parties have identified a number of commitments they each can make on training and skills development, and which is set out in this Accord. This booklet sets out the text of the Accord. This booklet has been produced as a public information resource. It is intended to help shop stewards, business representatives, community activists and government officials to communicate the contents of the National Skills Accord to a wider audience. The purpose of the communication is to empower South Africans to implement the wide-ranging commitments that are contained in the Accord and mobilise the private sector, organised labour, communities and government in a strong partnership to expand skills in the country as a platform for creating five million new jobs by 2020. 

The Medium Term Strategic Framework (MTSF) of the new Administration guides the implementation of the National Development Plan (NOP) and its operational plans for the economy - the New Growth Path, the Industrial Policy Action Plan and the National Infrastructure Plan. This Strategic Plan reflects the Economic Development Department's (EDD's) commitment to implementation of its responsibilities under the MTSF.The core objectives are to support economic growth that creates decent employment opportunities for our people on a mass scale and that overcomes the profound inequalities that characterise the South African economy. The objectives included in this Strategic Plan are critical steps toward achieving these over-arching aims.