Mind the gaps: Why South Africa needs to rethink the journey from education to employment

South Africa doesn't have a single skills gap – it has three. Dr Riaan Steenberg, executive director at Eduvos, argues that unless we address shortages, better align education with industry, and give graduates meaningful workplace experience, we will continue to produce qualified young people who struggle to find work while employers struggle to find talent.

You’ve heard it before: today’s students must prepare for jobs that don’t yet exist. It’s a quandary that puzzles parents and youth alike when subject selections need to be made, and aptitude tests are conducted.

A quick search of current vacancies, however, suggests that the future may have dawned already. Roles such as AI relationship manager, prompt engineer and AI governance specialist are already appearing alongside established professions that are also fundamentally reshaped by technology.

The statistics can seem overwhelming. The Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 highlights the scale and pace of labour market change: by 2030, a combination of technological, demographic, economic and green transition trends will have displaced 92 million existing jobs. Yes, it will create approximately 170 million new ones, but who knows what those will look like?

In a world where estimates are that over 600 million additional jobs will have to be created to keep up with the demand from young people entering the labour market by that same year, a question flashes in neon light: How are we preparing the youth and current students?

In South Africa, the debate has often been reduced to the topic of a simple skills gap. The term appears in economic reports, policy discussions and boardrooms across the country. Employers struggle to find suitably prepared people, even as large numbers of graduates and young people struggle to find work.

Dr Riaan Steenberg, executive director at Eduvos

Dr Riaan Steenberg, executive director at Eduvos, one of South Africa’s largest private higher education institutions, argues that this familiar diagnosis is too simplistic. “We don't only have a skills gap in South Africa. We have a shortage gap, an alignment gap and an experience gap,” says Steenberg.

He argues that understanding those three gaps, and how they reinforce one another, is critical if South Africa is to build the talent it needs to compete in a rapidly changing global economy.

A game of threes

South Africa's labour market is characterised by two seemingly contradictory realities: persistently high unemployment (32.7% in the first quarter of 2026) and a simultaneous shortage of critical skills.

The challenge is therefore less about an absolute lack of talent than a mismatch between the skills employers need, and those entering the labour market. This speaks directly to Steenberg's first gap: skills shortages. It also leads naturally to the second: an alignment gap, where higher education and industry are not sufficiently aligned on the knowledge, capabilities and attributes required in a rapidly evolving economy.

Yet even if these two gaps are closed, a third remains. Too many bright-eyed graduates enter the workplace with a qualification, but without the practical experience and workplace readiness that employers increasingly expect.

Closing all three gaps, Steenberg argues, is essential if South Africa is to build a workforce capable of competing globally.

Producing the future graduate

Steenberg doesn’t believe all recognisable vocations will be made obsolete by AI. “Accounting, law, computing, design, bioscience, business… any other field. These are not going away,” he says. For him, AI is not replacing expertise; it is increasing its value.

As generative AI becomes capable of producing reports, code, designs and research in seconds, the differentiating skill is no longer simply producing information. It is understanding whether that information is accurate, relevant and useful. What you know becomes less important than understanding why that knowledge is important.

This changes what higher education needs to develop. Future graduates require three complementary capabilities. The first is deep disciplinary expertise. Whatever field they choose, students still need a solid grounding in their chosen profession.

The second is digital fluency. Graduates must be comfortable working alongside technologies such as AI, understanding both their capabilities and their limitations.

The third is what employers increasingly describe as distinctly human capabilities: analytical thinking, communication, creativity, collaboration, ethical judgement and adaptability.

The World Economic Forum echoes Steenberg’s arguments in an opinion piece from June 2026. It states that while jobs that didn't exist prior to the era of artificial intelligence are emerging in the space where AI meets data, cyber security and human governance, a tertiary degree still matters thanks to the importance of skills such as analytical thinking, structured problem-solving and depth of knowledge.

“The AI-born economy is not a threat to human work; it is a redefinition of it, and there remains a large and meaningful role for humanity in the workforce,” the article reads.

Steenberg summarises: "The competitive graduate is not human or digital. The competitive graduate is human plus digital."

The two streams of the economy

That Human 2.0 won’t necessarily always fit neatly into a cookie-cutter vacancy slot. Perhaps, says Steenberg, it is time to stop viewing higher education primarily as a pipeline into employment. Rather, view it as a catalyst for economic participation beyond standard employment. "Education alone does not create jobs. People who are educated are more likely to create the jobs."

Viewed through this lens, it becomes a tale of two talent pipelines. The first is the delivery stream: graduates with the technical expertise to strengthen existing industries and contribute productively from their first day at work.

The second is the generative stream: graduates who identify opportunities, establish businesses, develop new products and create employment for others.
South Africa needs both. The country cannot innovate without entrepreneurs, nor can it grow without skilled professionals capable of delivering those innovations at scale.

This is particularly relevant as industries such as mining, manufacturing, renewable energy and digital services undergo rapid technological transformation. Rather than replacing these industries, future-ready graduates can modernise and strengthen them.

Graduates who contribute from day one

More graduates armed with the skills required for the future economy solve gaps one and two. To address the third gap, Eduvos integrates workplace experience into its model.

If employer engagement starts after graduation, it is too late. Eduvos’ 2026 Employer Skills Survey showed that 86% of employers want graduates to already have work experience.

For Eduvos, says Steenberg, graduate readiness is designed into learning through employer partnerships, work-integrated learning, digital capability, recognition of prior learning (RPL) pathways, and learning models that enable students from diverse backgrounds to access higher education.

To prepare our education system for this outcome, Steenberg argues for targeted partnerships that will bring governments, employers, education providers, and professional bodies together around a very practical promise that a student should not leave a career-oriented qualification with only a certificate and a transcript. “They should have experience and a structured exposure to authentic work,” he says.

Closing the gaps together

Closing South Africa's shortage, alignment and experience gaps will require partnership rather than prescription. Government has an important role in setting standards, widening access and ensuring quality, but it cannot solve these challenges through regulation alone.

The pace of technological change demands an education system that can evolve alongside industry, experiment with new delivery models, and build closer relationships with employers.

As Steenberg cautions: “We need to embrace the future, not throttle it.”