The Collective X
Kim Barns is an accomplished professional with extensive experience in business partnerships, strategy development, and project management across various sectors, including renewable energy, agriculture, mining, and education. Currently serving as Executive Business Partnerships at The Collective X since April 2025, Kim has previously held key roles at Scaled Impact as Director and Senior Manager, leading business development initiatives, strategic management, and team mentorship. Kim's expertise also includes research leadership at Injini, where the focus was on supporting African EdTech through strategic partnerships and data-driven initiatives. An Independent Consultant for a brief period, Kim’s work addressed sustainability and community development. Moreover, Kim's early career involved program management and research coordination at Business and Arts South Africa. Academic credentials include two MBA degrees from GIBS Business School and Università Bocconi.
This person is not in any teams
This person is not in any offices
The Collective X
A highly coordinated strategy involving both the public and private sectors, focusing on developing entry-level digital skills, is essential to tackle the digital skills shortage in South Africa. Collective X, a not-for-profit organisation, is a coordinating intermediary driving a national digital skills strategy to address market failures and unlock scalable, demand-driven solutions. Historically, South Africa’s digital skills ecosystem has operated in silos, leading to inefficiencies and a mismatch between skills supply and market demand. Our role is to align skilled youth with employer needs, using outcomes-based funding to quickly scale solutions. Our immediate goal is to build a robust entry-level digital skills pipeline, ultimately positioning South Africa as a global competitor. Through a national collaborative initiative, Collective X has developed a plan to drive a national digital skills strategy to address current market failures. Our change strategy will address the inefficiencies in the skilling system to ensure businesses have access to the right digital skills to remain competitive, foster growth, and generate employment. If successfully implemented, this plan could double South Africa’s national output of digital skills and create approximately 500,000 high-value digital jobs over the next decade for marginalised young people. As part of our change strategy to address how digital skills development and absorption has taken place in the South African ecosystem, Collective X focuses on four key areas for success: 1 - Co-funding for change and scale 2 - Apply the SFIA Framework 3 - Implement Work-Integrated Learning 4 - Ecosystem Advocacy