All 21 SETAs in South Africa and What Each One Funds

South Africa has 21 SETAs, and picking the right one is the fastest way to find a learnership. A SETA is the body that funds and registers skills programmes for one sector of the economy. If you know which sector you want to work in, you know which SETA to watch, and you can go straight to the source instead of refreshing job boards.

Checked on 11 August 2026. Every website address below was tested on that date, because a surprising number of published SETA lists point at addresses that no longer work.

What a SETA actually does

SETA stands for Sector Education and Training Authority. They were created by the Skills Development Act No. 97 of 1998, and there have been 21 of them since the sector landscape was reduced from 23 in 2010.

Employers pay a skills development levy, calculated on their payroll. That money goes to the SETA for their sector, and the SETA puts it back into training. In practice a SETA does four things:

1. Works out what skills its sector is short of, and publishes that as a sector skills plan.
2. Registers learnerships and the qualifications behind them.
3. Funds programmes: learnerships, apprenticeships, internships, bursaries and skills programmes.
4. Accredits training providers, which is what makes a qualification real rather than a certificate from a company nobody has heard of.

Every industry and occupation in South Africa falls under one of the 21. None is left out, which is why “which SETA covers this?” always has an answer.

All 21 SETAs

Two addresses that most published lists get wrong

We tested all 21 rather than copying them, and two are worth flagging because they appear incorrectly on a lot of otherwise useful pages:

• PSETA is pseta.org.za, not pseta.gov.za. The .gov.za version does not resolve.
• W&RSETA and MICT SETA need the www. prefix to load reliably. Without it, both time out.

Which SETA should you be watching?

Start from the work you want, not from the SETA. A few common ones:

How to use a SETA website without wasting an afternoon

SETA sites are not built for job seekers, so a little navigation knowledge helps:

1. Look for “Learners”, “Learnerships”, “Opportunities” or “Careers” in the main menu. Some hide it under “Skills Development”.
2. Find the list of accredited training providers, usually a downloadable spreadsheet. This is the most underused document on any SETA site. Providers in your province are the people who actually recruit learners, and contacting them directly puts you ahead of everyone waiting for an advert.
3. Sign up for the newsletter or notices if there is one. Learnership windows open and close quickly.
4. Check the discretionary grant announcements. When a SETA funds an employer, that employer then has to recruit learners, usually within a few months.

The SETA itself is usually not your employer. It funds and registers the programme. You still apply to a company or a training provider, which is why “applying to a SETA” rarely gets anywhere on its own.

A warning worth repeating

A SETA never charges a learner to be placed on a learnership, and neither does a legitimate accredited provider. Programmes are funded by employer levies. Any request for a registration, admin or placement fee is the clearest single sign of a scam, and “SETA accredited” in an advert means nothing unless the SETA is named and the provider’s accreditation number is given.

Sources

• The National Government of South Africa directory of SETAs, for the official names.
• Skills Development Act No. 97 of 1998, which establishes the SETAs and their functions.
• Each SETA’s own website, tested over HTTP on 11 August 2026.

Next steps

• How learnerships work, and how to apply
• What learnerships legally have to pay you
• Learnership, internship or apprenticeship?
• Learnerships you can apply for without matric

Checked on 11 August 2026. SETA websites are reorganised often. If a link here has broken, please tell us on our contact page and we will fix it.