Opportunity 9: Reflection and Analysis
Human Factor 3: Shaping the frontal cortex as a critical youth development strategy
What happens when the thrust of our national youth development strategy is to connect young people to jobs, and there are no jobs to connect them to? Then we sit with a 50% unemployment rate among 18 – 34-year-olds and fear the ticking time bomb when young people eventually have had enough of being left […]
Tags: Human Factor, The Human Factor, The Human Factor Publication
Posted on 5 Mar 2021
Human Factor 3: Coming of age in South Africa
Having worked my way through the DG Murray Trust’s latest issue of its annual publication, Human Factor: Young People Open Minds, I decided to apply my open mind to the difficult topic the issue took on, which was young people’s individual and collective identity formation in our country. The publication delves into the complex lives […]
Tags: Human Factor, The Human Factor, The Human Factor Publication
Posted on 23 Feb 2021
Why zero-rated mobile phone content is a nation-builder
Cellphones have possibly been the most powerful societal bridge-builder of the post-Mandela era. Their introduction to South Africa coincided with the advent of democracy in 1994 and now, almost every household has at least one. However, their potential contribution to socioeconomic development has never been fully exploited, and in an increasingly digital world, they now […]
Tags: cost of data, data cost, data free, date-free, zero-rating
Posted on 22 Feb 2021
Introducing the Human Factor 3: young people – open minds
In her essay “In memory of who we are”, which opens the third issue of the DG Murray Trust’s (DGMT) Human Factor, social justice activist Lovelyn Nwadeyi writes: “We often talk about identity as something that we can define and determine for ourselves as individuals. While that may be true in part, it is perhaps […]
Tags: Human Factor, The Human Factor Publication
Posted on 4 Feb 2021
Protecting the gains from the Covid disaster
The Covid disaster showed up much that is wrong in South Africa, but it also demonstrated that many things can be made a lot better – fast. The ban on alcohol sales proved that women and children can feel safer in their communities, especially over weekends. While the sales ban can’t continue indefinitely, a ban […]
Posted on 27 Nov 2020
No data or support: the reality of learning through lockdown in South Africa’s post-school institutions
While the impact of COVID-19 on school-going learners has featured prominently in national discourse, many students in post-school education and training institutions feel like they’ve been left to fend for themselves. “I haven’t received a computer or data. I live in an area with poor network coverage, and [to get network coverage] I have to […]
Posted on 11 Sep 2020
Media Statement: Court application to compel MTN to zero-rate approved PBO websites
The DG Murray Trust has launched a court application to compel mobile network operator MTN to zero-rate the local educational websites of public benefit organisations that have been officially approved, but not actioned. This application follows three months of engagement with the three largest network operators (Vodacom, MTN and Telkom Mobile) urging them to zero-rate […]
Posted on 20 Jul 2020
COVID-19 must be used to disrupt long-term mortality trends – and radically improve our education system
The clinically cold term ‘excess deaths’ has worked its way into the global lexicon. It means the number of deaths that occur in excess to that which would typically be expected in any given time period. If the death rate for whites is an acceptable norm for South Africa, then there are roughly 200,000 excess […]
Posted on 11 Jun 2020
Zero-rate mobile services for health, education and development. NOW!
If ever there were a time to capitalise on the fact that there is a cellphone in every home, it’s now. Schools, preschools, reading circles, health clubs, antenatal classes, job skills and a wide variety of community support programmes have been cancelled. The pipeline of learning and teaching to millions of children has been abruptly […]
Posted on 24 Mar 2020
Young people must help design a youth employment plan
To reduce youth unemployment, young South Africans need to be involved in the design and implementation of the President’s recently announced youth employment plan. If it fails to match the realities on the ground, then the Presidential Youth Employment Intervention will remain just that –another plan on paper writes Kristal Duncan-Williams. Across the country, young […]
Posted on 29 Feb 2020
