South Africans have become accustomed to bad news, particularly around the country’s dismal unemployment figures. It was around 32.9% in the first quarter of this year, up from 31.9% in Q4 2024, according to Stats SA. The picture is dire for those aged between 15 and 34, and in this segment, that figure is hovering around 46%. The number is around 60% for those between 25 and 24. There are also signs that more people of working age are losing hope that they’ll ever get a job, says Stats SA.
The Collective X non-profit reckons there are a total of around 317 400 IT jobs in South Africa, and a total of 118 500 vacancies, or 37.3%. Vacancies for juniors is at 41 500, or around 35% of jobs.
Collective X started life in the Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator in Braamfontein. In 2023, it merged with an initiative called TechXit, which was working to address the digital skills gap. The new entity then set about incubating a national programme for digital skills. Its CEO is Evan Jones, who comes from the Harambee accelerator. He now heads up a team of about two dozen people, who are implementing its Digital Skills Impact Fund.
The fund works like this: Collective X opens an application window; there was one in October last year, and another in April 2025. It put up R50mn for each of these windows, which companies can access if they commit to providing jobs. “They have to put up the jobs if they want to qualify for our fund,” he says. After the October window, 1 000 jobs were awarded.
Its second-year target will be 4 000, and in its third, 5 000 young people will get jobs. “We will, in the next few months, have the first 1 000 young people in programmes on their way into employment.”
There are a number of conditions for receiving the funds. These include that the job must align with the IT professionals jobs landscape and the company also runs an apprenticeship programme. Another proviso is that the young person is employed for at least 12 months. The company will then receive the funding, up to R69 000 per hire, when it reaches certain milestones.
We’ve listened to business for a few years, and we’re mobilising a strategy and solution in response to what business has said.
Evan Jones, Collective X
Jones says the starting point for its fund was asking how it could influence employers to provide jobs.
“There’s a lot of training happening,” he says. “Setas are training, corporates are accessing YES money, there’s Employment Tax Incentive money, but we don’t want to add more money to that. We’re saying there needs to be a training and apprenticeship programme, or what we call work-integrated learning, because that what these young digital grads need. They need work exposure. We want to incentivise absorption.”
Only employers of young people can apply, not training providers, because the employers can work with their preferred training providers, or they may have an internal training team.
Jones says it had been “overwhelmed with applications [from companies], it was brilliant” and ultimately chose 27 employer partners in its first window. He says they range from big names, such as the banks, to medium and slightly smaller organisations, across sectors, including consultancies and software development houses.
As for the R69 000, Jones says the employer can spend it as they wish, such as topping up a stipend, increasing apprenticeship capacity, or on infrastructure costs. A company can also blend its Collective X funds with learnerships or YES money.
“Ours is an outcomes fund, and we pay on milestones. We pay a little bit of the money upfront, we pay out a little bit more when the young person writes an assessment and they are deemed work-ready, and we pay out the majority of the money once they’re presented with an employment contract.”
Jones says once the company has applied, Collective X does a “deep” due diligence, both financial and technical to see if the company can deliver on what it has committed to.
“Once we’ve checked and verified the company, we’ll make the first payment. On the next milestone, they will need to give us all the young people’s assessment results, and they’ll get their next tranche of money, and milestone three will be the employment contracts that get vetted, and we then pay them out.”
The applications are submitted on its partner platform. He says there has been some integration with Experian for credit checks.
We want to incentivise absorption.
Evan Jones, Collective X
Like any company, Collective X is also on a modernisation and automation journey. Without more automated systems, says Jones, it won’t be able to scale as efficiently.
He estimates that the R69 000 that it’s paying per beneficiary, for the six-month programme, would be around a 75% cost contribution, “so it’s substantial, and that’s why employers are jumping at it.”
In practice, the R69 000 per candidate is the total possible amount, but the baseline amount is R60 000 per candidate. There’s an incentive of R4 500 if the candidate is female, and another R4 500 if it’s a person with disabilities.
Jones think that one reason young people aren’t being absorbed into the market is that there’s a lack of real work exposure in a learning programme. “It’s fundamental to driving absorption into employment.”
The company lacks the means to track the now employed worker beyond the 12 months. As for the actual absorption rate, he points to Harambee’s Digilink work integrated learning programme, which has had a 98% absorption rate for the last four years.
The programme is open to unemployed South African citizens between the ages of 18 and 34. It also doesn’t place any limits on prior education, so corporates can source grads from universities, TVETs, or private academies.
“We’ve always said that we’re a private sector-led initiative that’s partnering with government for policy issues. We’ve listened to business for a few years, and we’re mobilising a strategy and solution in response to what business has said. The reason we’ve targeted employers, and we’ve provided them with this flexibility, is to enable them to leverage their score card and their BEE and skills development spend and run their own preferential procurement process. If we had done it another way, it would have put up artificial barriers.”
He says Collective X now has about R500mn secured for the next five years.
Collective X has other irons in the fire, and continues to be prioritised under the Presidential Youth Employment initiative. Jones says it’s also being prioritised under a partnership between the government and 150 CEOs. There have been two phases to the partnership, which have seen the CEOs, under the leadership of Discovery CEO Adrian Gore, and others, meet with the president and his team, to create an economic transformation plan. The plan focuses on electricity, logistics, corruption and crime, and employment. “It’s a bit like a Covid response to our economy,” says Jones.
“Trump aside, I’m very optimistic about what the GNUis doing, and I’m optimistic about the work of this business-government partnership. There’s a real push to turn things around and I’m encouraged by that. I also think that among the business leadership that I’ve been engaging with, there’s a desire to do something.
“I think we can get to 10 000 [job placements] as Collective X. It’s like a scratch on the bigger problem, and the bigger problem is going to necessitate that we try to bring new jobs into South Africa, and that has all sorts of dependencies on our economy, like more investor-friendly conditions, for starters.
“With talent, our unemployment pool is close to nine million. For our work, we’re talking about 10 000 over 36 months, and we can double the national throughput to 40 000. These are low numbers compared to the nine million and the broader unemployment challenge. But it’s transformative from a financial inclusion point of view. I don’t think we’re going to fix STEM subjects, or at least I’ll probably be retired by the time solutions are vaguely imagined. We’re riding on the fact that there are nine million unemployed young people. Can we find them, match and assess them, and get them into the 40 000, 50 000 target that we’re driving? Because that’s all that is within our control.”
* Article first published on brainstorm.itweb.co.za
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