4 media monitoring trends to watch in 2023

The background

The National Youth Development Agency (NYDA) was established after a merger between Umsobomvu Youth Fund (UYF) and the National Youth Commission. Both organisations were facing closure because of their ineffectiveness in changing the state of youth business in South Africa. On Interface, the CEO of NYDA, Steven Ngubeni, commented that they had inherited legacy issues from both organisations when they merged. From this alone, you can tell how easy it is to attack this organisation.

I’ll admit there is no love lost between me and the NYDA. In fact, in my opinion, we don’t need another youth funding organisation making assumptions about what businesses really need, while entrepreneurs are actually out there changing the world.

Vusi Thembekwayo, a motivational speaker and entrepreneur, is heading up the ‘Stop the NYDA’ campaign. His heart is in the right-ish place. Where I find this campaign flawed is in its moaning nature which has little impact, apart from the odd 100 comments on an update, 1 000 Facebook page ‘likes’ later.

Five reasons why this campaign is a waste of time

Social media is useful as an enabler of movements, for self-coordination, and giving a voice to those who, pre-Web 2.0, would have gone unheard. We are, now more than ever, able to self-organise behind more causes and rally the masses for common interest.

In the case of ‘Stop the NYDA’ campaign, it is simply another platform for people to complain about the lack of service and the irrelevance of NYDA as an organisation, without encouraging action which could effect actual change.

1. It’s just another tired campaign
2. It’s missing the point and an opportunity to create actual positive change
3. The campaign is not self-organising for change – it’s doing it simply to complain
4. Armchair activism
5. The campaign’s answers include creating a venture capital model

Youth businesses are suffering while we’re all waffling

Thembekwayo, you were a far better speaker than the NYDA CEO – but you already know this. The campaign is a good idea, but I would like to see it coordinate the masses to actually build businesses and not just complain that some government agency isn’t doing its job. We are well within our rights to hold them accountable, but in the meantime youth businesses are suffering while we waffle away about what should be happening.