Professional Provident Society partners with Make Education Fashionable to bridge graduate unemployment gap

The Professional Provident Society (PPS) has announced a strategic partnership with the Make Education Fashionable (MEF) Convocation and Awards to support graduate professionals in South Africa. This alliance combines PPS's 85-year legacy of supporting graduate professionals with MEF's mission to make education visible, valued and viable. The partnership aims to create tangible pathways to employment, entrepreneurship, professional networks and career opportunities for SA's graduate professionals.

The partnership is crucial given the current state of youth unemployment in South Africa. According to Statistics South Africa's Quarterly Labour Force Survey for Q2 2026, youth unemployment among 15 to 34-year-olds climbed to 47.4%, representing roughly 5 million young people without work. Graduate unemployment also edged up by 0.2 percentage points quarter-on-quarter, from 12.2% in Q1 2026 to 12.4% in Q2 2026. This highlights the need for initiatives that support young professionals in securing employment.

Through this partnership, PPS will be integrated across the Convocation's three pillars: celebrating graduates and educational achievement, awarding excellence across nine categories with R250,000 in prize money, and creating opportunities via an expo that connects graduates with employers, internships, scholarships, bursaries and other forms of professional development. The partnership also aims to embed financial management skills from the outset, recognizing the importance of budgeting, saving and investing for sustainable wealth creation.

Professor Mamokgethi Phakeng, patron of the MEF Convocation, emphasized the importance of education leading to economic opportunities. "Education must lead somewhere. We created this movement because we want young people to see education as worth pursuing, graduates to feel proud of what they have achieved, and society to recognise that academic success deserves visibility." The partnership enables PPS to build a more sustainable platform that reaches more young people and creates spaces where education leads to professional, developmental and economic opportunities.

For PPS, the partnership is an extension of its ethos of mutuality, which emphasizes the value of people achieving more when they support one another. Beyond sponsorship, PPS will contribute thought leadership content, participate in conversations that support graduates entering professional life, and use its network to help connect award nominees and attendees with career-building opportunities. Ayanda Seboni, PPS Group executive for mutuality, highlighted the organization's commitment to recognizing the achievements of graduates and encouraging lifelong learning.

The 2026 MEF Convocation, scheduled for December 5, will accommodate approximately 500 graduates and guests in academic regalia. The expanded programme includes nominations assessed by 45 adjudicators from academic, professional, entrepreneurial and development fields, ensuring recognition spans various fields, including research, agriculture, artificial intelligence, entrepreneurship, leadership and mathematical sciences. This initiative complements PPS's broader social impact strategy, which includes targeted reskilling programmes that respond to the skills mismatch affecting many graduates.

The PPS-MEF alliance sends a clear signal to corporate South Africa that investing in graduate success is not charity but an economic imperative. With graduate unemployment rising and youth joblessness at crisis levels, the private sector's role in creating work-integrated learning opportunities, internships and graduate programmes has never been more critical. As Professor Phakeng puts it, "Let's make education fashionable. But let's also make it count."

Key points

• The partnership aims to create pathways to employment, entrepreneurship and career opportunities for SA's graduate professionals.
• The initiative seeks to embed financial management skills from the outset to support sustainable wealth creation among young earners.
• The partnership complements PPS's broader social impact strategy, which includes targeted reskilling programmes that respond to the skills mismatch affecting many graduates.