Author: Amuzweni Lerato Ngoma - Title: Knowledge Manager
Organisation: Umsobomvu Youth Fund; P O Box 982 Halfway House 1685 - lerato.ngoma@uyf.org.za; +27 011 651 7000, +27729153263; http://www.uyf.org.za

SYNOPSIS

Youth Development organisations in South Africa have variedly adapted a research strategy as a way of gaining knowledge. Monitoring and evaluation methods and systems have also been used to assessing the impact of youth development programmes. Once again, the key distinguishing factor is the manner in which the knowledge gathered through M&E is reapplied into the organisations themselves, and shared with the broader youth development sector for the improvement of programmes and youth impact achievement. This paper therefore discusses the attempts made by three youth development organisations in adopting a knowledge management strategy in a bid to achieve their respective organisational mandates.

The primacy of knowledge management for South African youth development

With some 39 per cent of South African society between 14 and 35 years of age, young women and men clearly comprise a substantial part of South African society. However, due to the policies of past colonialist and apartheid governments, an extremely low number of young women and men were afforded the opportunity to develop to their full potential. Young people have experienced poor housing conditions, limited and racially-biased access to education and training, limited employment opportunities, and have been exposed to high levels of crime and violence and a general disintegration of social networks and communities. In addition, the previous governments did not develop any specific policies or programmes to address the needs of young women and men, and in particular those of young and black women and men.

Status of Youth in South Africa

It is generally agreed in South Africa that youth unemployment is very high. The South African youth policy states that youth constitute 70% of the unemployed. The Status of Youth Report (SYR), commissioned by the Umsobomvu Youth Fund in 2003, also revealed a high level of poverty rates among young people; stating that about a third of young people (34%) reported living in poverty,1 while 68% of them had never had a job. Gender, race location and age were key determinants in the level of unemployment and poverty suffered by young people; in which unemployment and poverty rates were usually higher among women and those young people resident in the rural areas. Racial disparities also persist, in which young white people find it easier to access employment than their black counterparts.
A key reason that is continuously provided for the high youth unemployment rate is the mismatch between the labour market demand and the skills-set that young people possess. It is estimated that each year about 826 000 youth enter the labour market having completed high school or having dropped out of education. Education and training in South Africa is a huge area, involving numerous bodies in the public, private and civil society sectors. While there have been a number of improvements since 1994, access to quality education and skills training, which effectively prepares young South Africans for the labour market or self-employment demands remains a critical challenge.

The democratisation of the South African society has offered many new opportunities and challenges to previously disadvantaged groups, including young people. Young women and men are now recognised as a vital resource whose future prospects are inextricably tied to that of the country as a whole. As former President Mandela put it in May 1994, “youth are the valued possession of the nation. Without them there can be no future. Their needs are immense and urgent. They are the centre of reconstruction and development”.

South African Youth Development Machinery

With the support of the South African government, a number of youth development agencies have been created. Three organisations, probably the most representative of youth development institutions in South Africa are the civil society umbrella organisation – South African Youth Council (SAYCC), the National Youth Commission (NYC) and the Umsobomvu Youth Fund (UYF). The NYC is the oldest formal youth development institution created in 1996, followed by SAYCC in 1998, and the announcement of UYF, which only became fully operational in 2001. At the provincial level, provincial governments have also created provincial youth commissions. The first provincial youth commission was created in the Free State province, while the Gauteng Province was the last provincial government to adopt the provincial youth commission strategy. As a result, all these youth development organisations are at different stage of development, which means that others are far advanced in the achievement of their mandates, while others are still adapting to the context, developing organisational strategies and youth development approaches.

The South African youth development machinery, in its entirety can be illustrated as:

GOVERNMENT STRUCTURES AND AGENCIES

• Parliamentary Committee on Youth, children, disabled

• Local government youth units
• National Youth Commission
• Interdepartmental Committee on youth/Youth focal officers
• Umsobomvu Youth Fund
• Provincial Youth Commissions

CIVIL SOCIETY

• South African Youth Council Youth organizations

• Youth development and issues based networks/coalitions
• Youth Development NGO’s and CBO’s

Arguably therefore, youth development in South Africa is still in its infancy. Notwithstanding this, it is agreed that the parameters of the holistic and integrated approach to youth development is premised on the following:

• The need for strong, visible national coordinating, policy development, monitoring and champion structures such as the NYC in government and the SAYC in civil society;

• The need for specific agencies or issue based structures to deal with implementation of specific programmes, such as the UYF, the National Youth AIDS Council, and so forth;
• Maintaining the distinction and difference between government and civil society institutions of youth, but with vibrant and mutually reinforcing working relationships;
• Strengthening and encouraging of mass organizations of young people in all spheres of society; and
• The existence of structures across government - in the form of provincial youth commissions and local youth units, as well as youth focal officers in departments.

Knowledge Management within the Youth Development Sector

Within this context, a few of the youth development agencies have begun to introduce some form of knowledge management to address the development of young people and to simultaneously achieve their organisational mandates. However, as this paper reveals, knowledge management is still a nascent field in South Africa at present. Notwithstanding this, there appears to be agreement that knowledge management is about the management of the processes of creating knowledge assets and applying them for the benefits of organisations and the communities that they serve.
The creation of knowledge in youth development requires specific modalities and methodologies. While these are likely to vary from one organisation to another they require a clear organizational commitment and understanding of knowledge management. Knowledge management strategies also have to be well-aligned to the emergent ethos and approaches developed and implemented by the youth development sector.
The application of knowledge (i.e., the process of applying knowledge in the organisation) involves using knowledge to develop and improve youth development programmes and service and to develop and improve institutional processes that support the organisational objectives, strategy and operating imperatives. Thus, it is generally recognised that knowledge can be captured, created and applied to improve youth development programmes and services as well as the agencies that design and manage these programmes and services. Here, the challenge is to find ways to facilitate the sharing and use of captured and created knowledge; to use specific modalities in knowledge application, such as model revision seminars and other related activities, which enable knowledge target markets to act on the knowledge.
The Umsobomvu Youth Fund (UYF) is the only youth development organisation that has explicitly developed a Knowledge Management Strategy and Programme (KMP) to squarely address these key challenges. The main purpose of the UYF’s KMP is the creation and application of an authoritative body of knowledge extracted and captured from UYF programmes and products (i.e., services) so that this knowledge can be re-used to inform the improvement and re-design and management of high-impact youth development products and services. While UYF applies knowledge management for the benefit of its own programmes and organizational management, it also recognises that in South Africa, where the need for youth development to accelerate and achieve a high-level of impact as quickly as possible is pivotal, this knowledge should be made available to all actors (public and private, national and provincial) engaged in youth development.
The role of knowledge management in UYF is described below, before outlining the ways in which knowledge management as been applied in two other key youth organizations.

Knowledge Management in the Umsobomvu Youth Fund

The Government of South Africa established the Umsobomvu Youth Fund in 1998 to develop programmes that prepare unemployed South African young women and men for employment, entrepreneurship or livelihoods. UYF is a national youth development agency that makes strategic investments to facilitate opportunities for young people to acquire skills, access job opportunities and create meaningful opportunities for self-employment. It does this to enhance the active participation of South African young women and men into the mainstream of the economy.
UYF delivers has three broad programmes areas: Contact, information and counselling; Skills development and transfer through on the job experience; and Entrepreneurial support and enterprise finance. These programmes focus on young women and men between the ages of 18 and 35 years. However, special attention is given to those young people who are most likely to be marginalised from the mainstream of the economy, such as those who are out-of-school young people or unemployed and unemployable, previously disadvantaged young people and those with disabilities.
UYF became operational in January 2001 and on 18 February 2002 issued its first Request for Proposals (RFP) allowing youth service providers to apply for financial assistance to support programmes within the above mentioned areas. Since this time, UYF has recognised the importance of knowledge management. The experience of issuing the RFP and the wealth of information this process generated was recognised as being both unique and valuable. This was the first time since the introduction of democracy that youth development programmes were supported on such a large scale and the RFP application process revealed special insights into the needs, capacities and opportunities facing youth service providers (i.e., development agencies working with young people). UYF realised it had to identify and respond to these if it was to ensure its investment into youth programmes would impact on the young women and men of South Africa.
Assessing the 724 applications received in response to the RFP was the first opportunity UYF had to investigate the capacity of its potential partners (i.e., service providers). Initially, this assessment was undertaken to identify the most competitive applications. However, it was also necessary to scrutinise and assess the information provided by applicant organizations in a systematic manner to assess their capacity for programme design and delivery.
UYF began to learn not only about its service providers, but how it too, as a key national agency in youth development, could improve its practices in the design and management of programmes. Staff at UYF were aware from the beginning that the RFP process contained a number of structural biases that could exclude potential partner organizations from applying or from succeeding in their applications. Thus, a review was undertaken to determine the ways this process could be improved upon in the future as well as to identify potential new programmes and application processes that would eliminate the shortcomings of the current granting arrangements. These were the first steps taken by UYF to assess itself within the context of the diverse needs of the youth development community in South Africa.
In 2004, the UYF research unit designed the Knowledge Management Programme (KMP) to address the challenges and opportunities that the first RFP process raised. The programme represents a conscious effort by UYF to create and apply a body of knowledge for the achievement of it organizational imperatives. The programme focuses on the following priorities:

• Design of an organizational strategy to take programmes and products to scale in an effective, efficient and quality driven and customer-centric manner;

• Interventions that stimulate young people’s learning and growth, and importantly in the achievement of youth sustainable economic livelihoods;
• Design of strategies that support learning and growth within the youth development sector;
• Identification and promotion of best practices in youth development programmes, products and services.

One of the most recognised best practice guides for youth development programmes in South Africa is the Umsobomvu Standards of Effective Practices (USEP). The USEP was adopted to inform funding decisions, prescribe capacity building interventions for the UYF's service providers, and to form a base for monitoring and evaluation of funded projects. For projects to be regarded as effective, they had to demonstrate where objectives had been met. Programmes were also required to demonstrate good governance and attempt replicate successful projects on a larger scale. Thus, USEP was developed to improve the quality of youth development programmes that were supported by UYF and its partners. USEP encourages youth development programmes to demonstrate the following characteristics:

1. Clear and measurable goals: the goals of the relevant organisation must be consistent with the programme being implemented in order to avoid the negative consequences that often result from a discrepancy between the mission and goals of the implementing agency and the objectives of the programme being implemented.

2. Effective management: this requires commitment of programme and project leaders to the goals and objectives of the programme, a commitment to staff development, a commitment to mobilising resources to sustain the programme, and a commitment to building a culture of openness and broad-based participation in decision-making. Indicators of effective management at the programme level include the organisation's ability to collect data on the impact of its activities and to use that data to monitor implementation and effect change control.
3. Preparation for livelihoods: this is linked to broader efforts designed to promote economic empowerment and link young people to new economic opportunities. A programme that prepares young people for livelihoods should consider the following issues when designing, implementing and assessing a youth development programme:
   • The local economic and employment opportunities available for young participants to tap into once the programme has concluded

   • The institutional and infrastructure support required for launching a successful youth development programme
   • The information required to identify opportunities and relevant recruitment criteria or other mechanisms to support successful participation in the programme
   • The type and quality of skills required to prepare young participants for sustainable livelihoods - this should be based on a clear understanding of the legacy of apartheid on young African women and men, and the resulting occupational and skill deficits

   Youth development programmes should be designed to help young people access sustainable livelihood opportunities at the conclusion of the programme. This should include the design of programme elements that incorporate participant follow-up support and aftercare in order to track performance beyond the implementation phase and to get feedback that can be used to improve programme performance in the future.

4. Foster youth transformation: this can be achieved by promoting young people's participation in decision making, promoting and nurturing leadership qualities and creating spaces for youth to demonstrate their value as assets rather than treating them as a problem. This development paradigm requires young people to be treated with respect and valued for what they can deliver - and given the opportunities to do so.
5. Measure impact: effective youth development programmes apply indicators to measure compliance with this standard that vary from assessing whether the programme has the capability and systems to collect and analyse information about transformation in the lives of programme participants, testing the strength of every aspect of the programme against agreed deliverables. Once information on impact is collected, it should be shared with programme participants and all other stakeholders. The information should then be used to demonstrate results and effect change or improve performance, if necessary.
   UYF has recognised that the generation and application of knowledge in the youth development field in South Africa is not limited by its work with service providers. There are many actors in this sector working at national, provincial and local levels. Moreover, there are also community volunteers, private service providers, seasoned professionals, public servants and international development agencies participating in youth development in South Africa. Thus, the UYF KMP has many possible clients. Two of these clients of the KMP, probably better described as partners, are described below.

Knowledge Management in the National Youth Commission

The National Youth Commission (NYC) was established and inaugurated on 16 June 1996 by President Mandela. The Commission has been established through the National Youth Commission Act (No. 19 of 1996) as a part of the Government's plan to develop a comprehensive strategy to address the problems and challenges facing young women and men in South Africa. The Commission is composed of five full-time Commissioners who are appointed by the President of South Africa on the recommendation of the Parliamentary Joint Monitoring Committee on the Improvement of the Quality of Life for Children, Youth and People with Disabilities.
The NYC aims to co-ordinate, monitor and promote the development of young people by ensuring the implementation of an integrated national youth development framework through various vehicles, in particular inter-sectoral and governmental collaboration. The strategic intent of the commission is to facilitate, through predominantly state institutions, programmes that are designed to improve the status of youth in South Africa. This includes the following strategic functions:

• Advocacy, lobbing, monitoring and evaluation;

• Research and development on youth issues;
• Policy formulation and analysis interventions;
• On-going communications and outreach programmes;
• On-going leadership capacity building and human resource development in youth related issues; and
• Effective management of the political environment within which the commission operates.

In its efforts to strengthen the policy research, development and analytical functions of the NYC, the commission endeavours to identify gaps in the knowledge about young women and men and invest in the development of a robust evidence base in the youth development sector. This includes the creation and maintenance of a database of youth specific research along with the development of a framework of youth development indicators. The NYC also commissions policy research and evaluation on the status of young people from public research institutions from time to time regularly distributes information on situation of young people through the use of its Management Information System.
It is difficult to state what the knowledge management strategy of the National Youth Commission is. This is because for one, the NYC, by its own admission has since its “experienced capacity challenges particularly in the area of research.”4 This is one of the major reasons that large research studies have been variedly commissioned by either non-youth aligned institutions, or institutions whose main mandate does not include that of conducting regular research on young people in South Africa. a notable research project which was undertaken to inform the formulation of the Nationla Youth Policy 1997, was the Status of the Youth 2002.

Knowledge Management in the Free State Youth Commission

The Free State Provincial Legislature established the Free State Youth Commission (FSYC) in 1996 with the aim of creating an enabling environment for youth development objectives to be realised through policy interventions and demonstration programmes, research and advocacy work aimed at policy initiatives. The mission of the provincial commission is to co-ordinate and work for the advancement and development of young people in the Free State Province through the design and implementation of an integrated youth development policy, plan and programmes by ensuring inter-departmental and inter-sectoral co-operation and provision.
Its objectives are to:

• Co-ordinate and implement an integrated national youth policy;

• Develop an integrated provincial youth development plan that utilises available resources and expertise for the development of the youth and which shall be integrated with Reconstruction and Development Programme;
• Develop principles and guidelines and make recommendations to the Provincial Government regarding such principles and guidelines, for the implementation of an integrated national youth policy;
• Co-ordinate, direct and monitor the implementation of such principles and guidelines as a matter of priority;
  Implement measures and programmes to redress the imbalances of the past relating to the various forms of disadvantage suffered by the youth generally or specific groups or categories of persons among youth;

• Promote a uniformity of approach by all organs of state, including provincial departments to matters relating to or involving the youth;
  Maintain close liaison with institutions, bodies or authorities similar to the Commission in order to foster common policies and practices and to promote co-operation amongst them;
  • Co-ordinate the activities of the various provincial government institutions involved in youth matters and to link those activities to the integrated national youth policy;

  • Develop recommendations relating to any other matters that may affect youth.

The FSYC is divided into two divisions: one political the other administrative. The political division directs and oversees the FSYC’s policy formulation and programme implementation, while the administrative division is responsible for policy and programmes, youth research, and finance and human resources. Knowledge management is located with in research unit.
The research unit endeavours to coordinate and pursue youth development research for the province. UYF has supported these research efforts by facilitating a develop anypartnership between the FSYC and the Centre for Development Studies (CDS) at the University of the Free State. The CDS is a progressive research and development unit within the Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences with the broad aim of promoting sustainable human development in the broader South African society. UYF’s support to this partnership was in the form of funds from its capacity building budget, which has resulted in the transfer of research skills to the FSYC’s researchers, enabling them to effectively monitor and evaluate youth policy and programmes in the province. This partnership improves the quality of the FSYC’s research and strengthens the credibility of its results.
The FSYC has been able to enhance youth participation in the mainstream of the Free State provincial economy through its influence on government’s youth development affairs, which was been informed by its own research. This is evidenced by the response of the provincial government to their research reports that contain well-informed and relevant policy recommendations. This was done through the development of a five-year research plan.
The funding provided by UYF has had many positive consequences. It has ensured that the policy monitoring function of the FSYC has been undertaken with objective knowledge and data so that the commission is able to provide evidence-based advocacy proposals. It has also allowed youth development practitioners and government officials to have objective knowledge on which to plan for youth development.
The knowledge emanating from the research is also useful for the UYF in understanding the status of youth development within the two tiers of government within the Free State province (provincial and local government), thereby allowing the Fund to develop and refine its interventions to better suit the needs of youth in the Free State province.

Improving skills development through National Youth Service

One way to illustrate the manner in which the South African youth development sector operates, and how the sector approaches knowledge management is to provide a policy and programme development example. The youth policy document adopted in 2002, entitled Towards integrated national youth development initiatives and programmes forms the foundation for the national policy and programme of National Youth Service (NYS). NYS hold a long history for the South African youth development sector. This is because, during the period between 1998 to 2000, the youth development practitioners located in various organisations attempted to get a national youth service policy passed. While the sector galvanised itself around developing the green and white papers on National Youth Service for a period of about 2 years, the South African government did not pass National Youth Service as a key policy and therefore programme of government. However, in 2001, the South African Cabinet approved the National Youth Service Policy Framework, not as a policy document, but as a guiding document on what youth service constitutes.
The National Youth Service Policy Framework does not bind government to mainstream and implement youth service as a key governmental programme. The work of seeking buy-into the programme, and therefore the implementation of the programme has largely rested on the lobby and advocacy activities undertaken by the youth sector, notably the Umsobomvu Youth Fund and the National Youth Commission.
While the youth service policy framework was adopted in 2001, it was only in 2004 that the South African President started making reference to the programme in his State of the Nation address.
Recently, UYF as focused its knowledge management efforts on identifying best practice in skills development and transfer in the design and management of the National Youth Service (NYS) programme and its partner projects. This is the first in a series of best practice studies that are planned to identify lessons learnt and propose better ways of doing things.
The review involved case studies of all the 21 NYS projects undertaken in South Africa since the first pilots were undertaken in 2002. Programme managers from the NYS Unit were also conducted along with review of the international literature.
NYS is not unique to South Africa. It has a long history in a number of countries, including Germany where it is known as Zivildienst, Canada (Katimavik), the USA (AmeriCorps), Costa Rica (Trabajo Comunal Universitario), and Nigeria (National Youth Service Corps). In South Africa, the National Youth Service Policy, entitled National Youth Service for South Africa, defines youth service as a transformative concept that includes the ‘involvement of young people in activities which provide benefits to the community whilst developing the abilities of young people through service and learning’. NYS aims to address some of the main challenges faced by young women and men in South African society, including young people's sense of powerlessness and irrelevance in society. Thus, NYS aims to contribute to the enhancement of young women and men as present and future social capital so that young women and men can participate meaningfully in the political, social and economic life of the country.
NYS is a unique programme for youth development in South Africa. It promotes a spirit of nation building among young people by inculcating a service culture, a common appreciation of nationhood and integrating youth development through service and learning activities. NYS distinguishes itself from other youth development initiatives by emphasising community service, structured learning and personal development, and preparation for livelihoods or exit opportunities such as further education and training, formal employment and self-employment.
The National Youth Service Unit (NYSU) has been responsible for the NYS programme. While it was initially intended that the NYC would be home to the NYSU, this role was later assigned to the UYF, with support from the NYC and the South African Youth Council (SAYC). The role of the NYSU is to:

• Identify, define and respond to the training and technical assistance needs to implement effective programmes;

• Assist in developing appropriate programme models that match the needs of communities;
• Develop and advise on incentive and rewards to encourage participation in the NYS;
• Develop the infrastructure that will support training, supervision and technical assistance to data collection and analysis needed to improve the NYS and measure its impact;
• Develop a national information system of NYS initiatives and act as a clearinghouse for information on available service opportunities for young people;
• Continuously explore innovative ways and identify resources that can be leveraged to fund the NYS;
• Establish criteria and materials that will enable line departments to identify whether development projects can be implemented through NYS projects;
• Develop and publish materials and manuals to enable NYS accredited providers to implement effective NYS projects.

NYS has produced many lessons in the field of youth development in South Africa. It presents a unique opportunity to enhance skills development and community service among young women and men, while building social capital in South African communities. However, it is necessary to build on these lessons and to scale-up the programme so that its full potential can be realised. Thus, the review of best practices sought to find ways in which practical, on-the-ground experiences could inform the future of the programme.
The term best practice is used in programme management and project development to describe a technique, method, process, activity, incentive or reward that is more effective at delivering a desired outcome than any other technique, method, process, etc. The idea is that with proper processes, checks and testing, a desired outcome can be delivered with fewer problems and unforeseen complications. Within the context of NYS, best practice refers to the design, implementation and assessment of models of service delivery that have proven effective in accomplishing desired programme and project outcomes; it reflects knowledge gleaned from the country's collective NYS experience since the programme's inception. The adoption of these practices helps to ensure programme sustainability and effectiveness, while responding to the needs of young women and men. Best practice is informed by programme and project information that is currently available and by lessons drawn from research, reports and field experience. Best practice in NYS reduces the experience of problems and unforeseen complications programme and project management in an effort to achieve higher levels of success.
Led by the Knowledge Management Programme, this review identified some 17 emerging best practices in NYS project design and management. These practices ranged from projects that sought to create diverse project teams (i.e., teams with young people from diverse backgrounds) when the tendency is often to more homogenous project teams that can be easier to manage, to the use of peer learning across projects, to the careful tracking and support of project graduates.
The report then built on the best practices identified by presenting a series of proposals on the ways in which these can be used to inform the future design and management of an expanded NYS programme. The report identified key lessons in the NYS programme and recommended ways in which future programmes may benefit from these lessons.
The experience of case study review of the National Youth Service Programme ahs enlightened all youth development practitioners for the need for knowledge management. As stated above, the South African youth development sector has been struggling to ensure that youth service becomes a key government programme.
While there were clear best practices identified by the report, which can be used for lobby and advocacy purposes, there remains valuable information and knowledge that has been missed out on as a direct result of the fact that:

• Programme and project formulation documentation was inadequately conducted;

• Examples include the mismatch of objectives and actual outcomes,
• Unclear or very confusing monitoring and evaluation indicators: typically evidenced by the confusion between lead and lag measures;
• Inadequate infusion of implementation lessons back into the project reformulation phase;
• On-site documentation of funded project implementation experiences and outcomes was inadequately conducted;
• Implementers i.e. the practitioners responsible for the day-to-day activities of the project were ill-equipped to document or seek out assistance in the documentation and monitoring of the project implementation progress and lessons learnt;
• Inconsistent capturing of on-site participant baseline and exit data;
• Inconsistent capturing of on-site lead and lag indicator information
• Impact information inadequate as most of the evaluation reports of the early projects piloted for the purposes of policy development were anecdotal in nature;
• Data could not be supplemented by on-site monitoring reports;
• The possessors of the knowledge on youth service in the country had moved out of the sector, and with them the knowledge and history;

The above challenges will make it difficult for youth development practitioners to irrefutably and authoritatively argue that the National Youth Service programme has resulted in effective skills development and led to sustainable livelihoods for young people.
Besides National Youth Service programme experience, the youth development sector in general has not been documenting, capturing and extracting its key lessons learnt. For one, the National Youth Policy is up for review, and knowledge of the outcomes and impact of the previous policy and programmes remains at worst implicit and at best anecdotal.
Thus, the youth sector needs to take it upon itself to contribute – in theory and practice – to the discourse about what needs to be done address the big national questions: such as how to improve service delivery; bridge the gap between the two economies, building a caring society and restoring the social fabric of communities; capitalising on its energy and willingness to experiment. In the absence of a knowledge driven strategy, the youth development sector limits its capacity to achieve service and excellence.
Given the multitude of programmes that are being run by the sector, there is a clear need to develop a system that would manage all of data, information and extract knowledge there-from. The NYC has research and knowledge development as one of its key mandates, its capacity to coordinate such research must be strengthened as part of its oversight function. Part of the role of a knowledge management within the NYC would be to put in place a system of monitoring and evaluation on youth development policies and programmes, as part of the NYC’s mandate to monitor the impact of government programmes and policies on young people.
The function of research and knowledge development as undertaken by the National Youth Commission in conjunction with its provincial commissions would alleviate the pressure on implementing bodies such as the Umsobomvu Youth Fund to continuously produce research and knowledge for the sector, and to focus on effective and efficient youth development models.
This research and knowledge management strategy for the youth development sector would therefore enable all parties to further mainstream youth development into the key programmes of the public and private sector. it would also enable the sector to develop high-impact driven products and services that sustainably reverse the high unemployment rate amongst young people.

Conclusion

Thus, research, the use of information, and the generation and management of knowledge in youth development is of crucial importance if South Africa is to design and manage youth development programmes that have a significant impact on the lives of its young people. Much has been achieved in the past 13 years, but there are still significant challenges facing the majority of young people and the development agencies that work with and for them. Youth development policy makers and practitioners are required to learn what they can from international practices, as well as to develop new ‘home-grown’ policies and programmes that learn from the lessons in youth development in post-apartheid South Africa.
There exists a clear need within the South African youth development sector for building coherence on sector roles, institutions and capacities that are required for effective youth development. Furthermore, with a clear South African youth development knowledge management strategy, more effective advocacy and communication strategies would emerge.

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