The official unemployment rate in South Africa rose to 32,9% in the first quarter of 2025, with the number of unemployment people increasing by 237 000 compared to the previous three-month period.
Youth unemployment (15–24-year-old job seekers), climbed to 62.4% in Q1 2025, the highest level since Q1 2022. This does not even account for young people who have given up on looking for work in the formal economy.
Despite this hunger for work, certain sectors of the economy are persistently unable to fill certain jobs, particularly high skilled fields, especially in the rapidly expanding digital economy, estimated to have a skills shortage of around 77,000 high-value digital jobs, with around 300,000 technology jobs currently outsourced to overseas workers.
Tech growth and skills
“Technology is no longer just an industry,” says Zandile Mkwanazi, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of GirlCode. “With the increased digitalisation of the entire public and private sector, it is fundamental to all other industries as well.
“The rise in e-commerce, the expansion of digital media and online training means digital literacy and technology accessibility are therefore barriers to entry for anyone wishing to enter the workforce,” she says.
The economy’s voracious appetite for tech means the system is struggling to keep up with the demand for key skills. This shortage is hindering economic growth and innovation. The specific shortage areas include artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, data science, data storage, information security, DevOps, and business intelligence.
While AI is the obvious area most will think of nowadays, people often forget the basics. Sadly, few young people in South Africa know how to use Microsoft Work or Excel correctly and effectively, and in business these are critical skills.
A male dominated field
Clearly, there is a huge mismatch between a massive labour pool made up mainly of young people. Unfortunately, it is women who are often left behind in key sectors like technology.
Of those professionals working in the field, the majority are men, due to historical and cultural factors, but also factors intrinsic to technology, and software development (coding) in particular.
For instance, while projects are tackled in teams, the work of coding itself can be solitary, especially in remote working environments. The long hours, high stress levels and often mentally arduous work can be a turn-off for many aspiring professionals, male and female alike. But things are changing and being a developer is becoming more appealing amongst the youth, including girls.
Investing in girl coding skills
Investing in the upskilling of these young women ensures a healthy talent pipeline for all organisations and equips those businesses with employees who are technology experienced.
Young women who are exposed to technology are more likely to get a decent job with extensive career opportunities. GirlCode was founded in 2014 as a women-only hackathon to address the inequality and gender gap in the tech space. It has now evolved into an educational institution that nurtures women in tech, facilitates their skills advancement and accelerates their entry into the tech industry.
In addition to the Hackathon, returning for another year in October 2025, GirlCode has expanded to include programmes like the Online Bootcamp and the GirlCoder Club, which offers Students from Grade 3 – 10 online training in Scratch, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Python.
“The GirlCode mission is to expose 10 million women and girls to technology by 2030,” Mkwanazi says. “By expanding GirlCode Hack across Africa, the goal is to do more than simply encourage more girls to code, but rather to form a thriving sisterhood of innovators in the making that is ready to tackle the continent’s most pressing issues.”
Moving the needle through partnerships
GirlCode doesn’t just run endless training cycles without a plane for the future. Girls who graduate are given the most relevant skills for the current, fast changing work environment.
One of GirlCode’s long standing sponsors and partners is Mint Group, an Enterprise Software Solutions company based in Johannesburg, Mint Group has sponsored unemployed women to go through the GirlCode Learnership from 2021 and provided them with workplace integrated learning which gave them the practical experience and some industry certifications that allowed them to find employment at both Mint Group and other tech companies upon completion of the learnership.
“Mint has been hosting GirlCode learners for several years now,” says head of people at Mint, Lauren Clark. “Kelly Govender was one of our first Workplace Experience learners in 2021 is still a part of the Mint family today. The young women Mint has hosted have brought diversity and a new perspective to the company, and their passion for learning and advancement has been a joy to observe.”
Two learners joined Mint’s MSP (IT support) team permanently in 2024, and this year all four of its interns were permanently employed in June, with one of the ladies starting out in the Marketing Team where her UX (user experience) skills will be put to great use.
“The Mint learnership programme is very thorough and equips the girls with great skills and exposes them to non-technical skills like decision-making and problem-solving,” says chief financial at Mint. “For businesses looking to develop young women in tech, a great place to start is to partner with organisations like GirlCode, as they have learned how to develop skills from the ground up and ensure companies are able to incorporate the learners effectively into a business.”
The future of coding
With the emergence of coding platforms and tools powered by generative AI, developing is now easier than ever, but building systems of the future that matter will ironically call for even more robust coding skills.
In a strong collaboration of private sector companies (like Mint Group), the Government and advocates like GirlCode, South Africa has the opportunity to produce a consistent and world-class pool of technologically skilled people to maintain the public sector’s expanding systems and process, as well as to innovate in the rest of the economy.
