South Africa’s youth unemployment rate stands at a staggering 60.9% for those aged 15-24, with 3.9 million young people not in employment, education, or training. For first-generation students navigating a fragmented system of universities, funders, and employers  – each operating in isolation – the journey from classroom to career has become an impossible maze.

TechFinancials sat down with Nozuko Mzamo, a social entrepreneur, Youthpreneur Enabler, and Youth Advocate with over 20 years of experience advancing education access and economic inclusion in South Africa.

Featured in Business Day newspaper for her pioneering work in youth development, Mzamo is the Founder of UKIYO, an edtech consulting company that designs and implements impactful programmes empowering youth and driving sustainable change.

Her latest innovation, the Global Student Support Platform (GSSP), poses a provocative question: What if we stopped treating the journey from education to employment as disconnected hurdles and started treating it as a single, navigable pathway?

The answer is a free mobile app covering the entire lifecycle – from figuring out what to study, finding funding, accessing psychosocial support, to landing that first job.

In private beta, GSSP attracted over 4,200 users who generated more than 1,300 click-throughs to bursaries and over 2,100 to job listings.

With a background in finance and consulting, Mzamo partners with organisations to develop and execute social impact strategies. Her model is B2C2B: free for youth, sustained through enterprise subscriptions and recruitment partnerships.

We sat down with her to unpack how GSSP is rewriting the rules of youth economic inclusion, and why she believes technology is the only way to break the proximity barrier that has kept millions of young South Africans locked out of opportunity.

Here is our full discussion:

Q1. TechFinancials: The South African youth unemployment rate is a staggering 60.9% for those aged 15-24, while 3.9 million are not in employment, education or training. In your opinion, what is the single biggest systemic failure that GSSP is trying to fix, and why haven’t traditional institutions solved this problem until now?

Mzamo: The single biggest failure is fragmentation. Every institution in this ecosystem is solving one piece of the puzzle in complete isolation. Universities manage admissions. NSFAS manages funding. SETAs manage skills. Companies manage recruitment. Each one doing their part, but no one holding the full journey together. The result is that a young person has to navigate a system that was never designed to be navigated. If you’re a first-generation student with no one in your family who has been to university, you don’t know what questions to ask, let alone which portal, or which website to visit for each answer. The system assumes a level of social capital that millions of South African youth simply don’t have.

Traditional institutions haven’t solved this because it was never one institution’s job to. They each have their own mandate, their own KPIs, their own stakeholders. No one sat in the gap between all of them. That is exactly where Global Student Support Platform (GSSP) sits, navigating the journey from the time you’re figuring out what to study, all the way through to finding your first job, and making sure you have what you need at every step.

And there is a harder truth that doesn’t get spoken about enough: the local system cannot accommodate all our youth, even when they do everything right. In 2025, over 900,000 Grade 12 learners sat for their final exams. Our public universities could only absorb 26% of them. TVET (Technical and Vocational) colleges a further 19%. CET (Community Education and Training) colleges 13%. That means hundreds of thousands of young people completed their schooling, did the work, and still found no clear pathway waiting for them. When the local system reaches its ceiling, our young people need to know that the world is bigger than what’s available at home, that international exchange programmes, global scholarships, and study and work pathways abroad exist and are accessible to them. That is not a luxury feature on GSSP. For many of our youth, it is a necessity.

Q2. TechFinancials: You mentioned that opportunities discussed in corporate boardrooms rarely reach the students who need them. Can you give us a specific example of this “information gap” you witnessed that made you realise technology was the only way to bridge it?

Mzamo: I’ve sat in rooms where a funder is lamenting that their bursary programme is undersubscribed. They’ve invested significant resources into designing a competitive opportunity, and yet applications are low. The following week, I’m at a career fair at a school in a township, speaking with Grade 12 learners who are academically strong, ambitious, and desperately looking for exactly that kind of funding, and not a single one of them has heard of it. That gap isn’t a failure of ambition on either side. It’s a structural failure of information flow. The bursary exists. The qualifying student exists. But the two never connect because one lives inside a corporate intranet and the other has no way of knowing where to look.

What struck me was that this wasn’t an isolated incident. It was a pattern. And the pattern had a name: proximity. If you happened to know someone who worked at that company, or attended that school, or sat on that committee, you got the information. If you didn’t, you missed out. Technology is the only way to systematically break that proximity barrier at scale.

Q3. TechFinancials:The platform is a free app, which is crucial for accessibility. How does Ukiyo plan to sustain GSSP financially in the long term without charging users, and how do you balance the social mission with the commercial reality of running a business?

Mzamo: The model is B2C2B, and to be clear about what that means, because it’s often misunderstood, GSSP is free for youth and will remain free for youth. Full stop. The revenue model is built on the B2B side of the ecosystem, the institutions, corporates, funders, and employers who benefit from being connected to an engaged pipeline of young South Africans. Think subscription models, promoted listings and recruitment pipeline partnerships, all priced for enterprise, none of it passed on to the youth.

Ukiyo as an organisation that already generates B2B revenue through our programme design, advisory, administration and management services. GSSP is not a standalone charity project, it is the digital infrastructure that complements and amplifies the work we already do with corporate partners, tertiary institutions, and youth development funders. The two sides of the business reinforce each other.

The beta phase has been self-funded to date, with strategic partners supporting some of the programmes we’ve implemented through the platform as we validate and build our value proposition. We are exploring grants to help us scale while we put the commercial revenue model into practice as the goal has always been building a sustainable business creating meaningful impact.

Q4. TechFinancials:You compete with established giants like LinkedIn and Pnet but argue that GSSP covers the “full cycle” while they only solve one piece of the puzzle. For a young person in a township with limited data, why is having all these elements, from funding to wellness to jobs, on one platform a better solution than using multiple specialised apps?

Mzamo: Let’s start with the data reality. Downloading five different apps, creating five different profiles, and navigating five different interfaces has a data cost. For a young person managing their data carefully, that’s a real barrier before they’ve even started. The real answer lies in the connection between cognitive load and trust. If you’ve grown up in a household where nobody went to tertiary, you don’t come with a mental map of how the system works. You don’t know that bursaries, outside of NSFAS, exist; that psychosocial support is available, that there are tutors and mentors you can access. Fragmented apps assume you already know what you’re looking for. GSSP is built on the assumption that you might not, and that is perfectly okay.

We create a connected experience that help youth transition through their different life chapters. We’re with you when you’re figuring out what to study. We’re there when you need funding. We’re there when the pressure of student life becomes too much and you need someone to talk to. We’re there when it’s time to find your first job. That ongoing relationship, being the trusted companion through those milestones, is something no specialist app can replicate, because they only see one moment of your journey.

LinkedIn was built for professionals who already have a career. GSSP was built for the young person who is still trying to get their first foot in the door, including the young person whose first door might not be in South Africa at all. We include international opportunities precisely because we know the local system cannot hold everyone, and we refuse to let that be the end of anyone’s story.

Q5. TechFinancials: With over 4,000 users in the private beta, you have data on engagement. What is one surprising trend or insight you’ve discovered from the “click-through” data that has changed your initial assumptions about what young South Africans need most urgently?

Mzamo: The most honest answer is that we assumed bursaries and funding would dominate user behaviour. When you’re building a platform for youth who face significant financial barriers to education. But the data told a different story. The top user intent on the platform is employment, with 45% of our users actively looking for job opportunities. Of the active opportunity clicks, 52% go to jobs and internships, compared to 31% to bursaries and scholarships. What this tells me is that a significant portion of the youth using GSSP are post and mid study, they’re not trying to get into university, they’re trying to get out and into a career. The urgency isn’t funding; it’s economic activation. They’ve done the work. Now they need the door.

It’s also a reminder not to build based on assumptions, even well-informed ones. The data humbled us and sharpened our roadmap. Intelligent opportunity matching and job-readiness pathways are now a greater priority in our next release than we originally planned.

Q6. TechFinancials: Your model relies heavily on partnerships with corporations, universities and funders. How difficult is it to convince these large institutions to collaborate and share their opportunities on a unified platform, and what is the primary incentive you offer them to join?

Mzamo: It’s honest work. Large institutions move slowly, and getting the right champion on the inside, someone who sees the value and is willing to advocate internally, is often the real challenge, not the value proposition itself. The conversation changes when you speak their language. For a corporate, this isn’t charity, it’s strategic alignment. Their Skills Development and Enterprise Development spend has to go somewhere; GSSP gives it a home with measurable outcomes, B-BBEE compliance, and ESG reporting. For a university, the incentive is visibility of their programmes to the students who would benefit most but might never have discovered them otherwise.

Across the programmes Ukiyo administers and manages on behalf of our clients, 85% of participants are employed within three months of graduation. That number opens doors. North-West University has facilitated bursary support funding through our partnership. Thrive student accommodation has secured beds for our bursary funded students. The LINK by Airlink has extended their youth access programme through GSSP’s reach. Emeris has deepened their career readiness work through our joint initiatives. These are just some of our strategic partnerships.

The proof of concept is already there. What we’re building now is the infrastructure to scale it.

Q7. TechFinancials: You have plans to expand to Pan-African and international markets. As a South African company, what do you believe is the unique perspective or value that you can bring to solving youth unemployment on a continental scale, compared to global platforms?

Mzamo: Before we even talk about taking GSSP to other markets, GSSP is already global in what it offers our youth today. And that isn’t an aspiration, it’s a response to a local reality that demands it. In 2025, over 900,000 Grade 12 learners sat for their final exams. Our public universities, TVET colleges and CET colleges could only absorb 58% of them for the 2026 academic year. The arithmetic is unforgiving. There are hundreds of thousands of young South Africans who did everything right, who studied, who passed, who showed up, and for whom there is no local seat. We cannot tell those young people that their only option is to wait for a system that has already reached its capacity.

So GSSP deliberately surfaces international opportunities: exchange programmes, global scholarships, international graduate programmes, and study and work pathways beyond our borders. We bring the world to young people who have never had a passport-holding mentor to show them it was even possible. That is the first dimension of our international strategy, not expansion of the platform, but expansion of the horizon we offer our users right now.

The second dimension is where we eventually take the platform itself. GSSP wasn’t designed in a Silicon Valley boardroom and then adapted for Africa. It was designed by someone who herself lived that youth from a village reality, advanced to sit in boardrooms with South African corporates and driven to a township the same week to work directly with youth. That lived proximity, to both the structural complexity and the human reality, shapes every decision we make.

Global platforms look at Africa and see a market opportunity. We look at Africa and see the same structural problem we’ve been solving at home: ambitious young people who are systemically excluded from information, networks, and opportunities that could change their lives. What we bring to the continent is a model tested under some of the hardest conditions in the world. If the ecosystem works here, and the early evidence says it does, it is a model that can be adapted and deployed across Sub-Saharan Africa with credibility that imported platforms simply cannot match.

Q8. TechFinancials: The app includes “psychosocial support.” Given that the biggest challenge for many young people is not just a lack of skills but a lack of hope, how does GSSP address the mental health toll of being part of a “lost generation” of NEETs (Not in Education, Employment, or Training)?

Mzamo: This is the question that sits closest to why we built what we built. Youth unemployment is not just an economic problem. It is an identity crisis. When a young person graduates, sends out fifty CVs, hears nothing back, and watches another year go by, the internal narrative that starts to form is: the problem is me. That erosion of self-belief is the most dangerous thing we face, because a young person who has lost hope won’t click on an opportunity even when it’s right in front of them.

We include psychosocial support in GSSP because we know that skills and information alone are not enough. If the wellbeing isn’t there, nothing else works. Through the platform, we connect users to mental health and wellness practitioners and peer support, not as an add-on, but as a core part of the journey. A young person going through financial stress while studying, or carrying the weight of family expectations while job-hunting, needs to know that support is accessible and that asking for help is not a sign of failure or weakness.

I also think there is something profoundly important about GSSP simply existing, about a platform that says to a young person in the most remote part of South Africa: you are seen, you are included, and the information and support that others take for granted is here for you too. That message, alone, has a dignifying effect that we shouldn’t underestimate.

Q9: TechFinancials: Looking ahead five years, you have stated that “success is when a young person can move confidently into a sustainable, dignified, and empowered future.” Beyond the user numbers, what specific metric or outcome would make you declare that GSSP has been a true success for the country?

Mzamo: The metric I care most about is measurable reduction in the NEET rate, specifically in the communities and demographics that GSSP directly serves. That is the national-level number that tells us whether the needle has moved. At the individual level, what would make me declare success is this: a young person who grew up in Khayelitsha, or a rural village in the Eastern Cape, or a township in the North West, someone who had no mentor, no corporate contact, no family member who had navigated this path, standing in their first job with confidence and the professional foundation to grow. Arriving there not because they happened to know the right person, but because the ecosystem walked with them.

We’re already seeing glimpses of that. The 85% employment rate within three months among Ukiyo programme graduates tells us the model works when it’s applied with intention. GSSP is designed to take that impact to scale, not just for the few hundred that go through structured Ukiyo programmes, but for hundreds of thousands of young people who currently have no structured support at all.

The day I can point to a cohort of young people from underserved communities who moved from access to GSSP, to bursary, to graduation, to employment, with their dignity intact, that is success.

Q10. TechFinancials: The private beta has been successful, but scaling to reach millions of young South Africans is a different challenge. Beyond the app’s features, what is the biggest hurdle you expect to face in the next 12 months, is it data costs, digital literacy, or trust from the community, and how are you preparing to overcome it?

Mzamo: Data costs. That is the most honest answer, and it is the barrier I lose the most sleep over. We can build the best platform in the world, and if a young person can’t afford the data to access it, we’ve solved nothing. That is a structural challenge that sits outside our control, but it is not one we are passive about. We are actively exploring partnerships with data providers, looking at zero-rating solutions, expanding access through campus Wi-Fi integrations, and launching the GSSP Ambassador and Volunteer Programmes, to drive peer-to-peer adoption in environments where connectivity exists.

Digital literacy is real, but it is less of a barrier than people assume. South African youth are digitally native in ways that often surprise people. The challenge is not using a phone, it’s data affordability.

We earn trust and will continue to earn it by showing up, doing what we say we will do, and by having the youth we serve become advocates on our behalf. The GSSP Ambassador and Volunteer Programmes are direct investments in that, 23 young people who believe in what we’re building, championing it from educational institutions and their local communities across the country. Word of mouth, in this context, is the most powerful marketing we have had to date.

Also read: GUGU LOURIE | SA app aims to connect students, bursaries and jobs in one platform