Minister in the Presidency, Sindisiwe Chikunga: KFC Africa impact report launch

Keynote address by the Minister in the Presidency for Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities, Hon. Sindisiwe Lydia Chikunga

Theme: "Private Sector as a Partner in Youth Economic Inclusion and Food Security"

Programme Director;

Ms Andra Ferreira-Nel, Head of Corporate Affairs, KFC Africa; Distinguished Guests;

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Good afternoon.

I wish to begin by expressing my sincere appreciation to KFC Africa

for the kind invitation to be part of this Impact Report Launch.

We commend KFC for its incredible track record in empowering young people across the country and beyond. In a country where youth unemployment is at crisis levels, an employer that has deliberately structured its workforce so that the majority is drawn from the very demographic most excluded from the labour market. This to us represents a substantive contribution to the resolution of the South African employment question itself.

I also wish to commend KFC Africa for being one of the key corporate partners of the Youth Employment Service (YES) - the substantive public-private partnership that has transitioned more than 200,000 young South Africans from being labelled as "unemployed" to being registered as "employed" through a twelve-month work experience placement in the private sector. KFC's participation in the YES architecture demonstrates, first-hand, how the transition from learning to earning can be operationalised at scale.

The Three Pillars of the KFC Impact Report

I understand that, during this Launch, KFC Africa will be presenting verified impact data and substantive outcomes across three pillars. These are:

First, Youth Jobs at Scale - KFC's role in employment creation, and in the skills pathways developed within the Quick Service Restaurant (QSR) sector.

Second, Franchising as SMME Acceleration - how the KFC franchise model builds Black-owned businesses, and how the substantive economic empowerment of Black entrepreneurs is being operationalised through the substantive extension of the franchise footprint.

Third, Add Hope - the 180 million-plus meals served to children since 2009, in substantive support of school nutrition and household food security.

The scale of these interventions is commendable.The Presidential Youth Employment Intervention - The Substantive National Response

Programme Director, allow me now to place the substantive KFC contribution within the broader Presidential Youth Employment Intervention (PYEI) architecture - our government's substantive national response to the youth unemployment crisis.

The PYEI was established under the leadership of His Excellency, President Cyril Ramaphosa, on the premise that South Africa's youth unemployment crisis cannot be resolved by government alone, nor by the private sector alone, nor by civil society alone. It must be resolved by a substantive coalition of all three sectors, operating within an integrated national architecture, with shared targets and shared accountability. The PYEI is that architecture.

The PYEI's substantive performance record, since its launch, is now on the public record. The Intervention has reached over 5 million young South Africans across its programmatic pathways. The SA Youth platform, which is the digital gateway of the PYEI, currently holds active registrations of more than 2.36 million young people, who are matched to opportunities in the labour market on an ongoing basis. The Employment Services of South Africa (ESSA) system has placed more than 402,515 young people into work experience, learnerships, and formal employment through PYEI-aligned partnerships.

Dear Colleagues, the President has repeatedly emphasised that youth unemployment is a national crisis. I want to suggest that, by "national crisis," the President is not merely referring to the high rate of youth unemployment - we receive those shocking figures from Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) every quarter. What the President is highlighting is the structural nature of youth unemployment - and, most importantly, the lack, or the absence, of a structural response on our part.

His orders are for us to go above and beyond what we are accustomed to - to step outside the structures we find comfortable, or convenient - and to begin reimagining more structural responses that do not rely solely on the creation of new jobs within existing sectors.

We need Projects that allow us to answer the substantive analytical questions of any strategic mission: In light of the youth question, where are we? Where should we be going? What is likely to get in our way - both threats and opportunities - as we navigate to that collectively desired destination? And what adjustments must we make, to deal with the threats, and to make the most of the opportunities?

Through the substantive knowledge management that reports like this one make possible, we must be able to anticipate, to respond, and to navigate the uncertainties and potential crises that lie between the current condition and the destination we are working towards.

The Theme - Private Sector as a Partner in Youth Economic Inclusion and Food Security

I now wish to turn my attention to the substantive theme of today's Launch: "Private Sector as a Partner in Youth Economic Inclusion and Food Security."

The framing of the theme is itself important. It does not treat the private sector as a passive contributor to social investment. It positions the private sector as a substantive partner in the delivery of two of the most consequential national outcomes we face - youth economic inclusion, and food security. What we are launching today is indicative of what a partnership can look like when it is executed at scale.

I therefore want to make a substantive call to KFC and its associated stakeholders. Our young people must be trained, integrated, and transitioned into viable businesses across the food , agricultural value chains, and related industries - from primary production, to logistics and distribution, to the food services and hospitality sector, and into the digital platforms that increasingly mediate all of these.

Every young South African who enters an agricultural value chain, ora food services enterprise, or a hospitality business, must have an exit pathway in place. This is what youth economic inclusion means, substantively. It is the substantive integration of young people into productive enterprises, on terms that give them ownership, agency, and the substantive prospect of accumulation.

The State of Food Insecurity in South Africa

Programme Director, before I set out potential interventions that must define our public-private partnership on youth economic inclusion and food security, in line with your theme, allow me to outline the sheer scale of the challenges before us.

The model developed and implemented by KFC Africa, when it is rolled out at scale , should help us resolve one of the substantive contradictions of our economy: that South Africa holds the position of a top agricultural exporter in Africa, alongside an increasingly food-insecure population.

In February 2025, Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) released the Food Security Report. The Report utilised data from the General Household Survey (GHS) for the years 2019, 2022, and 2023.

The Report's most important finding was that:

"The proportion of households in South Africa that experienced moderate to severe food insecurity was estimated at 15.8% in 2019, 16.2% in 2022, and 19.7% in 2023. Over this period, the proportion of households that experienced severe food insecurity was estimated to be 6.4%, 7.5%, and 8.0%, respectively."

Crucially, the food security status of South African families is not being driven by the lack of availability of food. Food is abundantly available in our shops, in our supermarkets, and in our informal traders. It is the accessibility, and the predictability, of that access that is the most fundamental challenge - especially for families that lack regular and predictable income sources.

As the Agricultural Economist Wandile Sihlobo has argued: "This challenge cannot be resolved by the agricultural sector alone, but through coordinated efforts to grow the South African economy, lift employment across various sectors, and provide appropriate support to vulnerable households."

What Would a Food-Secure Society Look Like?

Programme Director, before we can speak substantively about the interventions required, we must ask ourselves what a food-secure South African society would look like.

Too often, food security is viewed through a narrow and limited lens. Food security is not about the mere availability of food. Food is abundantly available - yet the marginalised remain food-insecure. The gap between availability and access is the substantive analytical question.

When viewed through a reparative justice lens, food security encompasses not just the immediate availability of food, but the restoration of historically marginalised communities, and their sovereignty over their own food systems.

We are only food-secure when all people, at all times, have physical, social, and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food - food that meets their dietary needs, and their cultural preferences - while acknowledging, and addressing, the historical injustices that have created the current food inequities.

This is the substantive challenge before us - and it is a challenge that no single player can resolve alone.

The Ripple Effect - Public-Private Partnership on Youth Economic Inclusion and Food Security

Programme Director, I now want to set out five substantive ways in which the private sector, as a partner in youth economic inclusion and food security, can help respond to the youth unemployment crisis at scale - and, at the same time, contribute to the substantive resolution of the food-security crisis.

One - Young People Must Work the Land

Programme Director, the first substantive intervention is that young South Africans must be supported to work the land. Here the private sector has a substantive role to play in transitioning our young and emerging farmers into sustainable agribusinesses.

The intervention required is a deliberate transitioning of young Black farmers - including young women farmers, and young farmers with disabilities - from the position of emerging farmer, to the substantive position of commercial agribusiness owner.

This requires the private sector to invest, deliberately, in three substantive support functions. First, in extension services, agronomic support, and technical mentoring. Second, in market access, off-take agreements, and supply-chain integration that let young farmers sell into predictable buyers at predictable prices. Third, in patient capital that funds the substantive transition from subsistence to commercial scale, and from a domestic sales orientation to a regional and continental export orientation.

Every job in commercial agriculture creates further jobs downstream - in agro-processing, in logistics, in packaging, in distribution, and in food services. The multiplier effect of a young farmer transitioning into commercial scale is substantively higher than the multiplier effect of most other sectors of the economy. The private sector must recognise this - and act on it.

Two - Enabling Access to Local, Continental, and International Markets

Programme Director, the second substantive intervention is the role of the private sector in enabling young South Africans, and young African entrepreneurs, to access local, continental, and international markets.

The multiplier effect of market access cannot be overstated. A young entrepreneur who sells only into her immediate local market is constrained by the size of that market. A young entrepreneur who sells into the continental market, or into the international market, is freed from that constraint - and can grow her enterprise at a scale that would be substantively impossible in her local market alone.

The continental opportunity is the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) , which represents a substantive market of over 1.4 billion people, with a combined gross domestic product of approximately US$3.4 trillion.

Three - The Food, Hospitality, and Distribution Industries

Programme Director, the third substantive intervention concerns the food, hospitality, and distribution industries themselves - the substantive industry cluster within which KFC Africa operates.

These industries hold immense potential to respond to the youth unemployment crisis at scale.

The intervention required is deliberate collaboration between the private sector and government to scale the youth absorption capacity of the food, hospitality, and distribution industries - through targeted skills programmes, through the substantive expansion of franchise and enterprise development schemes, and through the integration of youth-owned SMMEs into the supply chains of the corporate players. KFC Africa's second pillar - Franchising as SMME Acceleration - is a expression of what this intervention can look like. The country needs many more like it, and at a much greater scale.

Four - The Digital and Platform Economy

Programme Director, the fourth substantive intervention concerns the substantive opportunities of the digital and platform economy for youth economic inclusion.

South Africa's young people are among the most digitally literate on the African continent. Our young people are on the platforms. They are creating content. They are trading online. They are producing music, art, code, and creative outputs at a scale that our traditional economic statistics have not yet substantively measured. The question , however, is whether our policy architecture, and our private sector partnerships, are catching up to what our young people are already doing.

The private sector has a role to play in the enablement of the digital and platform economy for young South Africans, particularly through the expansion of affordable, high-speed data access into the townships, the rural areas, and the informal settlements where the majority of our young people live.

The digital and platform economy is one of the substantive frontiers of the twenty-first century economic mission. Our young people are on that frontier already. The private sector must meet them there.

In Closing - The Substantive Partnership South Africa Requires

Programme Director , KFC Africa has set a substantive standard, through the Impact Report we are launching today. You can counton our partnership and we very much look forward to working with you well into the future.