As youth unemployment climbs to a record high, Cell C’s growing body of youth-focused work, from Take a Child to Work to a new partnership with Canva, points to a brand trying to be useful, not just visible, in young South Africans’ lives
JOHANNESBURG, 20 July 2026: Cell C believes South Africa’s young people are not short of ambition, talent or ideas. What too many of them are short of is access, to opportunity, to tools, to a way in. It is a gap Statistics South Africa’s most recent labour force survey puts into sobering context, with youth unemployment now at 45,8%, the highest rate on record. But numbers alone do not capture what is lost when a generation of ambition goes unmet. It is against that backdrop that Cell C has been quietly building a body of work aimed less at marketing to young South Africans and more at standing beside them
That intention has taken shape most visibly through See Youth, Cell C’s ongoing youth empowerment platform anchored by its Take a Child to Work initiative, which gives young people direct exposure to real workplaces and career pathways rather than a one-off inspirational message. It is a deliberate departure from campaign thinking. Instead of speaking at young people from the outside, Cell C has chosen to show up inside the spaces and experiences that actually shape their futures.
The latest chapter in that story is a new partnership with global design platform Canva, announced this week. Where See Youth opens the door to the world of work, the Canva partnership hands young people a practical tool to walk through it: professional-grade design and content creation software that can turn an idea into a CV, a portfolio, or the beginnings of a small business. As one entry point into the partnership, Cell C customers on the 4GB Data Bundle will receive three months of Canva Pro at no extra cost, a small but deliberate signal of intent rather than the headline act.
The Canva partnership is structured to grow well beyond that single offer. Over the course of 2026, Cell C and Canva plan joint youth activations and community design labs, alongside support for small business owners navigating their own version of the same access gap. Cell C has described its role in the partnership as an enabler of entrepreneurship and creativity in the communities it serves, language that echoes the same ambition behind See Youth: presence over promotion, and tools over talk.
“See Youth taught us something important, that young people do not need another brand telling them what is possible, they need a brand that actually removes a barrier standing in their way. Take a Child to Work opened doors into workplaces. Canva puts a set of professional tools directly into their hands. Both are the same commitment, just expressed differently, and it is a commitment we intend to keep building on,” says Melanie Forbes, Chief Marketing Officer at Cell C.
For a generation facing the toughest labour market South Africa has recorded, gestures are cheap and access is not. Cell C’s bet, through See Youth, Take a Child to Work and now Canva, is that showing up consistently in young people’s everyday lives will count for more than any single campaign moment ever could.
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