Empowering Youth, Women, and Communities

The Sasol BRIDGE TO WORK (BtW) is a program designed to enhance employability among unemployed individuals, with a special emphasis on youth and women. Sasol has partnered with Deviare to deliver the inaugural 4IR Bridge to Work Program.

Drivers

South Africa’s unemployment rate is the highest it has ever been at 34%. Youth unemployment is even worse, sitting at approximately 70% (first quarter of 2022). 

Efforts to address this problem have not yielded any major breakthrough and the problem seems to be multiplying faster than solutions can be developed. In part the crisis relates to the poor capitalisation of latent potential among young people. As the global demand for new age
digital skills grows at an accelerated rate across industries, South Africa MUST rapidly develop internationally competitive skills in order to get a fair share of this global demand. This is the most sustainable way of creating jobs

4IR Bridge to Work Solution

Empower youth of Sasol fence line communities with applied 4IR skills in order to compete globally, create scalable start ups, build sustainable digital SMMEs that are relevant to their community, and secure employment where they can make a valuable contribution and transformative impact.

The programme considers the need to focus on technical skills as well as core or soft skills required to develop a well rounded digital entrepreneur and/or professional. Sasol’s fence line communities can develop local digital capabilities that can compete globally while
advancing the economic interests of the local community.

Programme Overview