LED Programme: The Jobs Fund

The objective of the Jobs Fund is to co-finance projects by public, private and non-govermental organisations that will significantly contribute to job creation. This involves the use of public money to catalyse innovation and investment on behalf of a range of economic stakeholders in activities which contribute directly to enhanced employment creation in South Africa.

To address the challenge of unemployment, South Africa requires high rates of sustained economic growth. South Africa’s macro-economic policy environment, infrastructure asset base, schooling system and regulatory frameworks are all key to growth. However, improving and reforming these factors is a long-term process.

The Jobs Fund does not intend to tackle these long-term, structural causes of low growth and unemployment on its own. Numerous government initiatives are already tasked with parts of that challenge. Nor does the Jobs Fund aim to replicate or substitute these initiatives; rather it presents an opportunity to complement these efforts with limited and short-term funding interventions.

These funding interventions will seek to overcome some of the barriers to job creation that have been identified. Some of these relate to demand for labour, some to the supply of labour and some to the broader institutional environment.

The Jobs Fund has been designed specifically to overcome these barriers by providing public funding through four “funding windows” i.e. Enterprise Development; Infrastructure Investment; Support for Work Seekers and Institutional Capacity Building.