Insights into Regional Development

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Received: 2024-09-22 | Accepted: 2025-05-11 | Published: 2025-06-30

Title

Entrepreneurship education as an intervention solution to youth unemployment in South Africa

Abstract

Youth unemployment has reached an intolerable level in South Africa (SA) since the advent of the new dispensation that was ushered in by the first democratic general elections in 1994. This high level of unemployment amongst young people is attributed mainly to a lack of entrepreneurship teachings at an early age of schooling. Teaching entrepreneurship subjects at primary schools and creating an entrepreneurship culture in SA has become crucial to motivating learners to become entrepreneurs. Using the qualitative research method, the key aspect of this study is to establish whether encouraging entrepreneurial teaching in primary schools at an early stage will create a culture of entrepreneurship that exposes young learners to entrepreneurial opportunities. A phenomenology was chosen nested in social constructivism to explore the participants' experiences of entrepreneurship culture in primary schools, with twenty-seven participants from five primary schools in the City of Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality (CTMM) purposefully selected in varying categories that include learners, educators, principals, and school governing bodies (SGBs). Face-to-face interviews using semi-structured interview questions captured the participants' lived experiences. Through the descriptive, thematic, and phenomenological data analysis, the findings advise on how primary schools could create an entrepreneurship culture to encourage learners to become entrepreneurs as an alternative career preference by applying three cardinal pillars of extra training for educators on entrepreneurship, allocation of extra time to teach entrepreneurship and incorporating the teaching of entrepreneurship in the curriculum.

Keywords

baseline, entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial culture, entrepreneurship teaching, primary schools, youth unemployment, young learners, teachers, school governing bodies, South Africa

JEL classifications

A21

URI

http://jssidoi.org/ird/article/196

DOI

DOI 10.70132/j5256343756

Pages

67-83

Funding

This is an open access issue and all published articles are licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Authors

Manchidi, Ntise Hendrick

University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa https://www.unisa.ac.za

Articles by this author in: CrossRef | Google Scholar

Journal title

Insights into Regional Development

Volume

Number

Issue date

June 2025

Issue DOI

DOI 10.70132/m6568466946

ISSN

ISSN 2345-0282 (online)

Publisher

VšĮ Entrepreneurship and Sustainability Center, Vilnius, Lithuania

Cited

Article views & downloads

HTML views: 93 | PDF downloads: 83

References

Adebakin, A.B., & Alege, S.E. 2023. Entrepreneurship Education in Nigerian University Secondary Schools: A Comparative Analysis of Content and Administration. Canadian Social Science, 19(1) http://cscanada.net/index.php/css/article/view/12881