A new review of South Africa’s youth development sector highlights a shift in the nation’s social innovation landscape. The Youth Development Innovation Review 2025, a collaboration between the Bertha Centre for Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship and the Standard Bank Tutuwa Community Foundation, profiles fourteen organizations and documents a strategic shift. The ecosystem is moving from isolated job-placement programs toward holistic models that foster skills development, personal wellness, individual agency, and economic opportunity.
The featured organizations were chosen based on a six-criteria framework for social innovation. To be included, each entity had to demonstrably address a deep social need, create measurable impact, operate via a sustainable and collaborative model, be designed for scalability, and embrace creative, experimental methodologies.
The profiled initiatives, ranging from tech hubs promoting “restorative” entrepreneurship to programs that integrate life skills with direct pathways to economic inclusion, form an emerging blueprint that offers vital, practical lessons for investors, policymakers, and development practitioners across Africa who are confronting similar youth challenges.