Harambee uses AI innovation to support South African youth at scale

Creating hope and employment for South Africa’s youth

Youth unemployment in South Africa is at a critical level. Over 56% of young people aged 18 to 35 — more than 9 million individuals — are considered not in employment, education or training.

Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator is a nonprofit social enterprise with a mission to solve youth unemployment at scale. It offers 24/7 support interactions to work-seekers and an online platform with access to a national network of earning opportunities.

“Harambee exists to help tackle the youth unemployment crisis,” said Hayley Clements, Head of Youth Services at Harambee. “We aim to do this by being a powerhouse of innovation, embracing disruptive technologies like conversational AI as a force multiplier for human impact.”

The Genesys Cloud platform is a key enabler of Harambee’s services, including inbound and outbound voice channels, web messaging, email, social, WhatsApp and an AI-powered chatbot. The impact has been in scale and efficiency as well as quality and service. Harambee has industry-leading 90%+ first-contact resolution and outbound answer rates, as well as 90% average quality scores.

Most importantly, it’s allowed Harambee to reach ever more youth in need — from 500,000 work-seekers in 2019 to 4.5 million work-seekers in 2024. Harambee has enabled 1.4 million earning opportunities for work-seekers, providing them with income and hope for the bright future.

In recognition of their achievement, Harambee won a 2025 Genesys Orchestrators Innovation Award in the Humanitarian Impact category.

Cloud transformation driven by unprecedented demand

South Africa’s youth unemployment crisis means demand for Harambee’s services continues to surge.

“A few years ago, our contact center delivery was decentralized and quite manual. We were using hard phones, not soft phones,” said Clements. “When COVID hit, we had to scale our 100-seat contact center to 600 seats very quickly. We went from handling around 500 to a thousand calls per day to volumes of over 30,000 per day, and we were able to do that through the use of Genesys.”

Harambee’s contact center acts is a work integrated learning program. Agents — known internally as guides — participate in a robust, one-year on-the-job training program designed to prepare them for internal and external opportunities.

At the same time, productivity is paramount, and Genesys Workforce Engagement Management has been a huge enabler — particularly as volumes continue to increase.

Harambee blends inbound and outbound queues seamlessly, significantly reducing wait times by managing resources effectively. The team achieved a record service level of 96% in 2025, and SLAs across other channels typically average above 90%. First-contact resolution has also remained consistently above 90%, which has improved customer satisfaction and efficiency.

“It a huge change to really be able to see what is happening on the floor,” said Neli Mzizi, Contact Center Manager. “We’ve been able to reclaim over 24,500 hours of productivity time.” The time saving has allowed the team to make meaningful investments in training, coaching, campaigns and more outbound calls.

AI for continuous improvement and safeguarding

Harambee uses AI across the breadth of its customer journey — from Digital Bot Flows to surfacing articles from the Knowledge Workbench.

AI-powered insights are also playing a pivotal role in continuous improvement initiatives. With Genesys Cloud speech and text analytics, Harambee can identify common queries and enhance services, or develop target training and resources for Guides. The team gained specific insights into promoting entrepreneurship among work-seekers.

“We get many rich insights from young people in these conversations and feel it’s our responsibility to take those insights and advocate on behalf of young people,” said Clements.

Real-time analytics flag words such as depression and suicide, enabling immediate intervention. And conversational intelligence tools such as Topic Miner and Intent Miner help refine the knowledge base, improving the quality of interactions across all channels.

“In both synchronous engagement with people and in providing asynchronous support, if we can give our Guides information that immediately provides deeper insight into who this person is, then the lag of helping is shortened as well,” said Davidoff.

Creating a virtuous cycle of impact

The work-integrated learning program multiplies Harambee’s impact. Guides provide more than transactional support; they offer hope, encouragement and practical advice that can transform perspectives.

With over 80% of the program’s first cohort having moved into formal employment, the program equips them for sustainable futures. Harambee shows what’s possible with innovation and purpose.

“Every interaction — whether by voice, chat, email or WhatsApp — represents more than just service; it’s a young person’s step toward opportunity, and a reaffirmation of our commitment to create a more inclusive, hopeful future,” said Clements.

An AI roadmap for supporting African youth

Harambee has an exciting roadmap ahead. Its “OneView” initiative will bring all relevant information about a young person onto a single screen, which will increase personalization and shorten handle time. Further development of the knowledge base with additional self-service will also increase speed and convenience for work-seekers.

Davidoff enjoys the pace of innovation with Genesys: “Every week you have release notes, and you’ve got to keep track of it because, inevitably, there will be something which is highly relevant for the work that we’re doing.”

Harambee is working tirelessly to dismantle the systemic barriers that keep young people from accessing work and income, and in doing so, uplift not just individuals, but families and communities across South Africa.

“We’ve shown that innovation and compassion can go hand-in-hand — using tools like conversational AI to enhance, not replace, human connection,” concluded Clements. “Our obsession with solving youth exclusion is matched by Genesys’ pace of innovation, allowing us to stay responsive as labor markets and youth needs evolve.”

To learn more about the solutions featured in this case study, visit www.genesys.com.