The Significance Attached to Education and Youth Development in Rural South Africa

Education plays a significant role in improving the socioeconomic conditions of individuals and communities. Given that the youth make up the largest proportion of the population in the rural areas, it is important to understand the social and economic dynamics that affect their ability to develop as individuals and members of society. To put it another way, the significance attached to education will play an important role in the development of young people in the rural areas. This can be attributed to the fact that these young people have to contend with the difficulties posed by resource mobilization when it comes to accessing education or, in some cases, the social and cultural constraints that they face. This chapter shows that the significance attached to the education of the youth in the rural areas of South Africa is a reflection of a myriad of challenges presented by cultural and social expectations and is compounded by the bottlenecks in educational resource mobilization