Siyaphambili Post-school Research Initiative

Siyaphambili, ‘we are moving forward’, is a hub for post-compulsory education information and research. We aim to:

• Expand the base of empirical research on those who access post-schooling and those who do not
• Enhance an understanding of education-related inequalities
• Investigate how graduates from diverse backgrounds and with different qualifications navigate the labour market and other post-graduation trajectories

We currently work on projects in South Africa and Ghana, utilising a combination of longitudinal administrative data as well as household and panel survey data.

The project is led by Nicola Branson and Emma Whitelaw, in collaboration with researchers in SALDRU, international scholars, and students working on the economics of education.

Browse a variety of the team’s journal articles, working papers, book chapters, briefs and other writings.

Current themes

Projects we are involved in span five themes related to tracking and monitoring, labour markets and social outcomes, inequality, funding policy, and capacity building. View these themes below for more information about Siyaphambili’s research agenda:

Find more information about current and past projects below.

Current projects
Student Access, Support and Mobility in Higher Education in South Africa

Education, Employment and Earnings: Insights from Administrative Data Linkages

Demography, Human capital and Sustainable Development

Education and labour market dynamics in a period of rapid education expansion: Building evidence from existing Ghanaian survey data sources

Social mobility from the middle to the top

Completed Projects
A study on women in Economics in South Africa

Access and Success in Higher Education in South Africa: Impact on Inequality

Estimating the cost of producing undergraduate-level graduates at South African universities

The COVID-19 health crisis and inequalities in post-school education in South Africa

Creating a hub for post-schooling information and research in South Africa

The Siyaphambili team acknowledges funding received from: 

• The Kresge Foundation, 2017 – 2020
• The National Income Dynamics Study, 2019
• DST‐NRF Centre of Excellence in Human Development, 2019
• Centre for Higher Education, 2020 – 2021, 2023, 2025
• The Spencer Foundation, 2020 – 2023
• Universities South Africa (USAf), 2019 – 2023
• The African Centre of Excellence for Inequality Research (through the UKRI), 2023
• International Economics Association, 2023 – 2024
• Gender, Growth and Labour Markets in Low-Income Countries (G2LM|LIC), 2023 –2026
• Carnegie Corporation of New York, 2024 – 2025
• Economic Research Southern Africa, 2025
• Southern Africa – Towards Inclusive Economic Development (SA-TIED) and the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER), 2025
• The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (supported by the Yidan Prize project funds), 2025-2027