Inside Global Citizen NOW: Johannesburg — Why I Was There and What It Means
There are rooms you walk into and feel the weight of what is possible. The Global Citizen NOW summit in Johannesburg was one of those rooms.
I did not walk into Global Citizen NOW expecting to be photographed for Getty Images. I walked in because the conversation happening in that room — about youth unemployment, digital skills, climate investment, and Africa’s place in the global economy — is the conversation I have been inside for years. And for the first time, the mainstream world seemed to be catching up.
Global Citizen has long been one of the most powerful platforms connecting activism with action. Their model is simple but profound: earn points by taking civic action, and earn access to moments that matter. That night in Johannesburg, the moments that mattered were about South Africa’s youth — and what the country owes them.
The Room I Was In
The evening brought together investors, executives, civil society leaders, and activists under one shared question: what does it actually take to move the needle on youth unemployment in South Africa? Not the surface-level answers — but the real structural work: access, infrastructure, certification, mentorship, and the political will to scale what already works.
I was in the same space as Tshepo Mahloele, one of South Africa’s most respected institutional investors and the force behind Harith General Partners — a firm that has directed billions into African infrastructure. That proximity felt significant. Digital skills and infrastructure are not separate conversations. You cannot train a young person in cybersecurity in a community without electricity or broadband. The green economy and the digital economy are the same economy, and the people building both need to be in the same rooms, having the same conversations.
That is what Global Citizen NOW created: one room.
What This Moment Represents for Digital Skills Africa
At Digital Skills Africa, we have been doing this work quietly for years — in KwaZulu-Natal academies, in peri-urban communities, in school halls where young people who have never owned a laptop are sitting their first Cisco certification. We have seen what happens when access meets ambition. We have seen 3,000+ young Africans walk away with industry-recognised certifications that open doors their background would otherwise have kept closed.
But the scale of the problem demands more than what any single organisation can do. It demands exactly what Global Citizen was convening that night: coordinated ambition between the private sector, government, civil society, and global capital.
Forbes recently covered Digital Skills Africa’s work as part of a wider story on how South Africa’s youth can lead the future of work. The journalist wrote about Microsoft’s commitment to train 1 million South Africans in AI and cybersecurity skills by 2026, and about public-private partnerships as the highest-return investment in a country sitting on what David Makhura called “the greatest opportunity to tackle youth unemployment.” We were part of that story — not as a footnote, but as proof of concept.
What I Carry Forward
Being in that room, being photographed as part of that moment, being seen alongside people who move capital and shape policy — it matters. Not because I need the visibility, but because the young people we serve deserve to see someone who looks like them, who came from where they came from, standing in rooms like that. That is representation in its most functional form.
We are not just training people for jobs. We are training them to lead. And to lead, they need to know that the doors to these rooms are not permanently closed to them.
Global Citizen NOW reminded me why we do this work. I hope it reminded everyone in that room of the same thing.
Written by
Jezeiyn Naidoo
Head of Operations & Partnerships, Digital Skills Africa · Founding Team, Syrex Data · Vula IQ