South Africa’s youth economy is not a future opportunity waiting to emerge; it is already active, trading and creating value.
Across communities, young entrepreneurs are building customer bases, generating income, and responding to real demand, often long before their businesses are visible to the formal systems intended to support them.
This matters because too many promising businesses remain unsupported at the stage when support can make the greatest difference. The issue is not a lack of effort or ambition. It is that visibility often comes too late, after a business has already been shaped by constraint, or after momentum has been lost altogether.
The broader context reinforces the urgency. South Africa’s youth unemployment rate reached 45.8% in the first quarter of 2026, while the informal sector remains a major source of livelihoods. These figures point to an economy in which participation is already happening outside traditional pathways, even if it is not always recognised early enough.
The real challenge is a structural mismatch between how businesses begin and how support systems are designed. Many entrepreneurs start by testing demand, trading informally, and building gradually. Yet support is often geared toward businesses that already have formal registration, established records, and predictable income. That gap slows progress at the very moment when growth potential is taking shape.
There is a tendency in South Africa to speak about youth entrepreneurship as if it is something we still need to spark into existence. But on the ground, that simply is not the case.
Across the country, young people are already building businesses. They are selling, serving, creating, delivering, and responding to real customer demand, often in highly constrained environments. In many instances, these are not side hustle efforts, but the early stages of businesses with real economic potential.
The challenge is not whether young entrepreneurs are trying. It is whether we are seeing them early enough to matter.
Frequently, visibility – and therefore support – comes too late. It arrives once a business has already absorbed setbacks, made difficult trade-offs, or lost momentum that might have been sustained. Yet it is precisely in these early stages that the right tools, guidance, and access can change the trajectory of a business. It is also important to shift how we think about informality. Many businesses do not begin as fully structured entities with established records and predictable turnover. They start with a customer need, a skill, or a gap in the market. Informality, in this sense, is not the absence of business activity – it is often the very first stage of it.
What is encouraging, however, is a noticeable shift in mindset. More young entrepreneurs are deliberately choosing to formalise their businesses because they recognise the value of visibility. Formalisation is no longer viewed only as compliance; it is increasingly understood as a strategic step towards credibility, access, and growth.
We see this in businesses like Lash & Dash, which began as a small, community-driven beauty service. By making deliberate choices to formalise – opening a business account, structuring finances, and building a visible trading record – it positioned itself for scale. That visibility enabled access to broader markets, partnerships and growth opportunities that would otherwise have remained out of reach.
Lash & Dash is now a collective of skilled, experienced artists specialising in luxury lash and brow treatments. Their dedication to delivering precision, care, and artistry all within an elevated yet welcoming environment. Located in Bryanston, Johannesburg, and Menlo Park, Pretoria, the salons offer a top-tier, calming experience designed to help customers to unwind.
This is an important signal. Young entrepreneurs do not only want to participate in the economy, but they also want to build businesses that can grow within it.
But visibility does not start at formal registration. It begins much earlier, with practical building blocks:
- A business account
- The ability to accept payments
- Separation of personal and business finances
- A track record of transactions
These are not administrative details. They are the first indicators that a business is real, active and investable.
If we are serious about unlocking the potential of South Africa’s youth economy, the conversation must move beyond funding alone. Funding is critical, but on its own it is not sufficient – particularly if businesses are not yet visible, structured, or positioned for growth.
What is needed is earlier, more practical enablement.
At FNB, this is a deliberate focus. Recognising that entrepreneurship starts long before scale, we have built solutions that meet businesses where they are:
- Gold Aspire provides an accessible entry point for young and emerging businesses to formalise, manage their finances and begin building a credible footprint
- nav» Marketplace connects businesses to tools, services and platforms that enable growth beyond banking
- Enterprise and Supplier Development (ESD) programmes help unlock market access, skills, and opportunity within broader value chains
- FNB App Academy and App of the Year recognise and skill youth entrepreneurs, increasing their visibility and opening further pathways for growth
These are not isolated interventions. They are part of a broader commitment to recognising businesses earlier and supporting them more intentionally across their journey.
Because the early stage of a business is often the most critical. It is where entrepreneurs test demand, refine their model and decide whether growth is possible. When support is present at that moment, it can fundamentally change outcomes—not only for the entrepreneur, but for the broader economy.
The implications are significant. When early-stage businesses remain unseen, the country loses future employers, contributors, and engines of local growth. But when they are recognised and enabled earlier, the benefits extend well beyond the individual business into communities and economic systems.
South Africa does not need to create youth entrepreneurship. It is already here, already active, and already contributing.
The real opportunity is to recognise it sooner — and to respond in ways that help it grow.
That requires a collective shift:
- From waiting for businesses to look established to supporting them while they are forming
- From viewing informality as absence to recognising it as early participation
- From focusing only on funding to enabling the full journey to scale
Young entrepreneurs are already building South Africa’s future. The question is whether we are building with them.
By Janis Robson, Business Development Head at FNB