Afrika Tikkun sells its recruitment arm

The Afrika Tikkun Group – which was the brainchild of late Chief Rabbi Cyril Harris and philanthropy and business icon Bertie Lubner, created to uplift South Africa’s disadvantaged communities from cradle to career – has recently sold off Afrika Tikkun Services. 

According to group chief executive Marc Lubner, the move streamlines operations, separating its commercial employment business from its non-profit operations as it looks to strengthen its long-term focus on child and youth development. The reason behind this was that the organisation had realised its competence wasn’t recruitment. 

“We realised we could still deliver on our cradle-to-career model without owning the company responsible for job placements,” said Lubner. “Instead, we can partner with experts who specialise in that work.” 

It sold Afrika Tikkun Services on 1 July to a consortium led by former Afrika Tikkun executive Onyi Nwaneri, who spent 15 years with the organisation and played a key role in building the business. It has been renamed African Transformation Services (ATS). 

Afrika Tikkun Services was established in 2019 and was the group’s commercial arm focused on career development work. 

Lubner explained that Afrika Tikkun, as a child and youth development organisation, historically has relied on the fact that there is a formal jobs market for people who benefit from the organisation. However, the idea of separating the two wings became wise as the industry became more specialised around job placements. 

“Onyi, who built Afrika Tikkun Services from the ground up, has extensive experience in developing the business. Now, backed by investors with significant resources and access to employment opportunities through their own companies, the arrangement makes even more sense,” said Lubner. 

“There’s no cross shareholding; ATS is now a completely separate company. An independent entity,” said Lubner. 

Because of this, Afrika Tikkun will no longer be running job-skill training for school leavers, but contracting other organisations such as ATS to prepare youngsters for learnerships, work experience programmes, and the like. 

“We’ll still carry on developing children and youth through early childhood development, through our after-school programmes, through work-readiness training programmes. But when it comes to what I call the next phase of training for the job market and placement into the job market, that’s going to be done by Africa Transformation Services and others,” said Lubner. 

There will be a symbiotic relationship between Afrika Tikkun and ATS, and Lubner foresees both organisations growing from strength to strength. 

“It means then we’ve got two specialised organisations focused on their own competency and strength. Africa Tikkun, at its core, is well established and has built trust in township environments,” said Lubner. “And then Africa Transformation Services has established its relationships within the corporate market. So by marrying the two sets of services, each company is going to be doing a better job. With specialisation and focus, we should be able to have a much greater impact when it comes to things like training, developing, and then ultimately placing kids in jobs.”