Right now, somewhere in South Africa, a grade 12 learner is staring at a university prospectus, doing maths that has nothing to do with their maths mark. Of the 927 143 candidates who wrote matric in 2025, more than 245 000 passed with a bachelor's endorsement — good enough, on paper, for university. The problem is, South Africa's public universities have room for about 235 000 first-years. That's not a gap. That's a wall and thousands of this year's matriculants are about to walk into it.
I'm not writing this to scare you. I'm writing it because there's a door standing wide open a few metres to the left of the wall and almost nobody is pointing you towards it. It's called tooling. South Africa and the world are hoping you enter that door and begin a career path in the Tool, Die and Mould sector next year.
Here's the maths nobody puts on a career-day poster. The National Student Financial Aid Scheme's (NSFAS) funding shortfall has grown from R2.5 billion in 2018 to R15bn in 2026. Nearly 190 000 applicants for 2026 didn't meet the academic criteria for funding. Youth unemployment for 15-to-24-year-olds sits at 60.9%. Nearly 46% of young South Africans aged 15 to 34 are Neet — not in employment, education or training. If your plan is "matriculate, then figure it out", you are one of millions with that exact plan, competing for a shrinking number of funded seats.
Now here's the maths that should be on that poster. South Africa needs roughly 30 000 newly qualified artisans a year to keep its economy running. We're training about 20 000. That's a 10 000-person hole every year and it's getting worse: the share of companies struggling to recruit artisans doubled from 10% in 2024 to 22% in 2025. And the average South African artisan is now in their mid-fifties. Within a decade, a generation of toolmakers, fitters and machinists retires — and if nobody has been trained to replace them, entire factories stop.
The question is simple: Who will replace them? This is where toolmaking comes in. Toolmaking sits at the heart of modern manufacturing. Toolmakers produce the dies, moulds, jigs, fixtures and precision tools that enable other manufacturers to make the products we use every day. There is a reason tooling is often described as the “Mother Industry” by the Chinese: manufacturing depends on the tools that make manufacturing possible.
No toolmaker means no locally pressed car panel, no moulded plastic component, no localised manufacturing sector, period. And South Africa's industrial strategy is banking on exactly that localisation to grow the economy.
It just hasn't said your name yet. I'd like it to.
Let's deal with the two objections I hear every time I raise this with a room full of matriculants and their parents.
The first is money. A toolmaking apprenticeship is a structured, accredited four-year training programme and, importantly, it is paid. You are not necessarily waiting for a bursary that may never come through. You are not taking on years of student debt simply to gain access to a qualification.
Instead, you can earn while you learn, working on real machines and developing practical skills under the guidance of experienced professionals. You graduate not only with a qualification but with years of workplace experience on your CV. By the time some of your university classmates are finishing their degrees and beginning the search for their first job, you could be a qualified tradesperson with substantial practical experience.
Toolmaking is not a dead-end trade. It can lead to supervisory and management positions, specialised precision-manufacturing roles, further technical education or even the opportunity to establish your own workshop. The skills are also transferable, with qualified toolmakers able to pursue opportunities even overseas.
The second objection is status. The quiet sense that a trade is what you do if university doesn't work out, not what you choose. I'd ask you to sit with that assumption for a second because it's costing this country dearly. Toolmaking is precision engineering. It's CNC programming, CAD design, metallurgy and measurement down to microns. It is not a fallback. It's a skill so specific and so scarce that the people who have it can write their own ticket, here or abroad. We are not short of toolmakers because the work is easy. We're short because too few young people even know it exists.
Here's what I'm asking, this matric season, of learners, parents, teachers and career counsellors alike: before you fill in that university application form as if it's the only form that counts, ask what a four-year, paid, globally portable trade could do that a funding-dependent degree with a one-in-many odds might not.
Ask your school to bring toolmaking apprenticeships onto the career-day stage. And if you're a matriculant reading this with a bachelor pass and an NSFAS application pending, you have another option and it doesn't come with a waiting list for space that doesn't exist.
South Africa isn't short of ambition among its young people. It's short of the tradespeople who build the country ambition needs to stand on. That's not a lesser path. For thousands of this year's matriculants, it might be the smarter one and it is one this country genuinely, urgently needs you to take.
Tapiwa Samanga, a mining engineer by profession, is an industrial business leader and a major voice in Africa’s manufacturing sector. He serves on continental and international industry bodies.