South Africa has one of the highest youth unemployment rates in the world. The legacy of apartheid along with rapid globalization have left many young people geographically removed from job opportunities. A lack of information, skills, networks, and social capital leave these young people discouraged and excluded. It is estimated that 40 percent of this generation will never secure stable work, despite a large investment in skills training by South Africa’s government and private sector. Employers say they struggle to find work-ready candidates and lack the ability to effectively evaluate these young job seekers.
Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator builds scalable solutions for the youth labor market across the formal and informal economy. Its matching tools and real-world training methodology help employers quickly and reliably gauge work-readiness and increase retention. Its high-tech “pathwaying platform” connects job seekers with opportunities developed through partnerships with businesses—whether behind a counter at Nando’s or at a desk at Deloitte.
Both the public and private sectors see Harambee as leading experts in the dynamics of the South African labor market. The Gauteng Province—including Johannesburg and Pretoria—has institutionalized the work of Harambee, relying on its platform and labor market solutions to address the youth unemployment crisis. Harambee’s innovations, now expanded into Rwanda, remove cost barriers for employers to hire unemployed youth and unlock demand for this otherwise excluded demographic. Governments have begun to see the value of youth-focused solutions, while businesses have begun to see value in a population that had long been invisible to them.
Countries around the world face mismatched labor markets, and the African continent will have a youth population of one billion by 2050.
Harambee helps create viable opportunities for the vast majority of South African youth who will never find jobs in the formal economy.
Nicola and Maryana built a complementary partnership to achieve Harambee’s mission of accelerating youth employment and inclusive economic growth.
On the strength of Harambee’s success in South Africa, the organization is expanding into Rwanda.
Businesses and governments leverage innovative approaches to pathway excluded African youth into economic opportunities. Employers see first-time job seekers as high potential, untapped talent. Youth succeed in jobs and livelihood opportunities across the formal and informal economy, improving their lives and those of their families and communities.
Harambee replicates through expanding government and business partnerships, and knowledge sharing for practitioners to adopt and learn from the model.
Executive Director, Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator
Chief Executive Officer, Wikimedia Foundation
Maryana Iskander is Harambee’s CEO and has led the scaling up of Harambee’s model since 2012. She previously served as COO of Planned Parenthood Federation of America where she partnered with the CEO and Board to double the budget, strengthen the brand, and rebuild the executive team. Maryana also partnered with the President and Board of Rice University to lead a 10-year strategic planning process that grew Rice’s international student body. Maryana was an Associate at McKinsey & Co, and a law clerk on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. She earned a B.A. from Rice University, an M.Sc. from Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, and a J.D. from Yale Law School. She is a Henry Crown Fellow and a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network. Nicola Galombik is Founder and Board Chair of Harambee. Nicola’s career spans television broadcasting, political activism, policy development, starting and managing her own change management consulting business, and more recently, investment and business leadership—all with a common thread of igniting and leading social change. After completing her studies in Johannesburg and at New York University as a Fulbright scholar, Nicola served as a leader in several anti-apartheid organizations and developed policy for Nelson Mandela’s first government. She is Executive Director of Yellowwoods, a private investment holding company, where she leads the inclusive growth strategy. Nicola is a fellow of the African Leadership Initiative and member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network.
African governments have historically relied on face-to-face services as a key mechanism for supporting citizens. At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, with those services largely suspended, there was an…
How do social enterprises and the funders that support them achieve impact at scale even in times of acute crisis? This is the question that prompted the Scaling Pathways partners—Skoll Foundation, Mercy Corps…
How do your talent needs evolve as you drive toward scale and how can you evolve with them? Health Leads on actively navigating talent through strategic shifts Alexandra Quinn, CEO…
We are delighted to announce the five winners of the 2019 Skoll Awards for Social Entrepreneurship, one week before we head into the 16th Annual Skoll World Forum: Crisis Text Line, Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator, mPedigree, mPharma, and Thorn. …
