Ankie Motsoahae

Ankie Motsoahae holds a Master’s degree in Management — Public and Development Management, from the University of the Witwatersrand, and a postgraduate Diploma in Public and Development Management. She is currently in the process of registering for a PhD with the same university.

Ankie Motsoahae has a passion for youth development, gender mainstreaming and public policy development. Her Master’s thesis was focused on the analysis of the disjuncture between policy intentions and implementation in the public sector.

Her career in the public and development sector began in the early 1990s, working as a national coordinator at the Women’s Institute for Leadership Development (WILDD).

Part of her job was to coordinate and facilitate capacity building training interventions for women from civil society, politics and the labour movement, with a view to positioning them as worthy contenders in the new political dispensation in South Africa.

This resulted in Ankie Motsoahae representing South Africa in various political international fora, including the United Nations Fourth World conference on Women, where she served as a convenor for the Girl Child/Young Women Sector.

She then started working in leadership positions in a few NPOs, such as SHEP and the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa, a donor organisation with a development agenda funding NPOs in southern Africa.

Subsequent to that, she joined the public sector, working for the Gauteng Department of Public Transport Roads and Works (DPTRW), responsible for transformation, youth and gender mainstreaming.

Part of her responsibilities was to advise the department on progressive youth development policies and gender equality.

From the DPTRW, Ankie Motsoahae joined The Presidency — the NYC, as the National Manager for the National Youth Service Programme (NYSP).

It is in this position that she elevated the NYSP to a priority programme of the government of South Africa, and ensured that there were structures in place to anchor the programme at the highest level of government.

She was responsible for political championing of the programme and vigorously advocated for it to be implemented by government departments such as the Department of Public Works (EPWP), and the Department of Human Settlements.

She served as a youth representative in the social cluster of the South African government. She was also part of the collective that drafted the prescripts guiding the implementation of the NYS, in her capacity as a student and youth activist, as well as an employee of the NYC.

Ankie Motsoahae also had the opportunity to work for the National Department of Transport as the Director responsible for Transport Infrastructure Investment in the Director General’s office.

In her current position as the Executive Director: NYS, she is responsible for establishing the NYS Unit (NYSU) within the NYDA, scaling up the programme, and ensuring that an effective coordination mechanism of the programme is in place at all levels of society.

This comprises, among others, ensuring that the programme is implemented by the three spheres of government, civil society and the private sector, and importantly, creating supporting structures for the implementation.