Quick Fire 🔥 with Ashley Immanuel

Ashley Immanuel is the co-founder and Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Semicolon, a company that is enabling Africa’s digital transformation by building tech-focused talent and businesses. Immanuel coordinates Semicolon’s delivery of innovative solutions related to education, talent management, digital advisory/implementation services, and venture-building.

She has two decades of experience delivering impact-focused work in locations worldwide. Immanuel started her career in management consulting with IBM Global Business Services. Before joining Semicolon, she was chief executive officer of EFInA (Enhancing Financial Innovation & Access), an organisation that drives inclusive finance in Nigeria through research, advocacy, capacity building, and innovation. In this role, she supervised leading research and engagement on financial sector innovation in Nigeria and oversaw the delivery of EFInA’s Innovation Fund.

• Explain what you do to a 5-year-old.

Semicolon builds technology solutions, which are things like the apps on your parents’ phones. We also teach people how to build these tech solutions, and we help companies hire and train people.

• From your perspective building Semicolon, what’s one thing companies consistently misunderstand about hiring “job-ready” tech talent?

Many companies seem to underestimate the range and depth of skills required when we talk about someone being “job-ready,” and what it takes to really build those skills.

An employer will say, “I want an entry-level back-end engineer.” Sounds like a simple ask. Usually, what this means in real terms is that she needs someone who has a strong enough theoretical foundation and practical skills to be able to do the technical work appropriate to their level, without causing problems or needing to be hand-held by a busy engineering manager. 

But it also typically means that the engineer needs to be able to think critically and solve problems, work well on a team and communicate clearly, learn quickly, be resilient, and proactive. These are all reasonable asks, but unfortunately, many graduates do not have all of these skills in sufficient measure. 

Some companies will then ask if we can run a programme for a few weeks to address the gap. I understand they’re working within programmatic and budget constraints, but building robust technical skills as well as soft skills like problem-solving can’t happen overnight; running a graduate trainee programme for a few weeks is not sufficient to bridge the gap.

All companies need strong talent, and many cite talent scarcity as a key challenge. I think it is time to come together to explore new models for investing in, and building the tech talent companies need.

• What does a bad tech training programme look like in practice, and what separates one that produces employable talent from one that doesn’t?

A “bad” tech training programme does not deliver on its stated outcomes. Often the curriculum and delivery is too shallow short-term to really deliver results. We also see some programmes that purport to be designed for job-readiness but are significantly misaligned with industry needs.

To use a medical industry metaphor, if the healthcare industry said they needed more doctors and nurses, the answer wouldn’t be to quickly train a million people in cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and taking vitals. Yes, those skills are useful, but the hospitals would still need the doctors.

I think the training misalignment is often driven by market pressure to reduce costs. Many people are looking for opportunities, but don’t have the money to pay for in-depth, high-quality education.

Producing employable tech talent takes quite a bit of investment and effort. We at Semicolon started running our one-year Techpreneurship (software engineering) programme because there was a gap in the market: employers complained they couldn’t find the talent they needed. In order to deliver high-quality training while keeping the programme accessible for people from a range of income backgrounds, we started training with a student loan or “study now, pay later” model. We had to solve the financing problem in order to build a programme that produces employable tech talent.

• When companies say “there’s a talent gap,” where is the gap actually coming from: training, expectations, or the companies themselves?

The gap comes from significant and longstanding under-investment in human capital. Building human capital starts long before people start thinking about job applications or career-specific training. 

In fact, it even starts before birth: adequate nutrition in the first 1,000 days of a child’s life, starting from conception, sets the stage for cognitive capacity. We need to ultimately build systems that support health, education and holistic development of our future talent from day one.

Semicolon’s Techpreneurship programme trains people from a range of backgrounds, about three-quarters of whom have university degrees. We’ve trained several computer science graduates who attended good schools and got good grades, yet they had to spend a year with us, working hard, to become employable as software engineers. This shows that our educational systems are not producing what industry needs.

I am not sure companies can or should “manage expectations.” None of us would be happy if our bank app suddenly lost some of our money, or we were given the wrong dosage of medication because the software used by the hospital had a bug. Companies need to be able to rely on team members who can own and deliver outcomes appropriate to their levels. I think companies should be actively involved in investing in and supporting talent development, but they shouldn’t lower their standards.

• What’s one lesson from your years working at EFInA and the intersection of financial inclusion that most tech founders today are ignoring?

There are a few key lessons from my time at EFInA that continue to be reinforced by my experience at Semicolon. First is how important enabling financial services can be in achieving economic and social outcomes. We at Semicolon have spent quite a bit of time and effort to establish student loan models that can work in markets like Nigeria. 

It is challenging because interest rates are high, credit information systems are still being strengthened, and many people are not accustomed to these types of loans. But we’ve persisted because our evidence has shown how catalytic this financing can be.

Second is that there is still significant non-consumption in African markets that can be addressed through innovation. Some people will say that fintech is saturated because they see many companies doing a similar thing (e.g., cross-border payments or digital microlending). However, many financial needs are still not addressed. Relatively few African households and businesses have insurance or other financial products that help manage risk, for example.

Third is that we can still do better in our approach to innovation. When I was at EFInA, we were able to engage with partners like IDEO.org to help Nigerian financial service providers better understand their potential customers and design viable solutions for them. IDEO calls this approach human-centred design; it can also be called design thinking. There is no point building a beautiful piece of software if it doesn’t address a real need.

• What is deeply lacking in Africa’s edtech sector today, and what steps are you taking to bridge it? 

To some extent, I think what is lacking in Africa’s edtech sector is Africa’s edtech sector. What I mean by that is that I wonder if we even have sufficient activity and coordination to merit the label of “sector.”
Some committed people are doing very interesting work to drive learning outcomes, but there are too many unaddressed gaps. I would love to see more people really tackling tough education challenges in deep, committed, and innovative ways.

I would also love for those of us working on education to coordinate and collaborate more. By this, I definitely do NOT mean more conferences. I mean deep, sustained and candid engagement, where we jointly review local evidence and lessons learned, ask tough questions, share advice, identify sector priorities, and figure out ways to build together. A more coordinated industry can also engage with and support the public sector more effectively.
At Semicolon, we’ve started partnering more broadly – with local and global universities, innovators, working groups—anyone aligned to our vision and interested in working together, really. We are always keen to support sector-enabling initiatives, such as the Africa Research Centre recently launched by our longstanding partner, Henley Business School.

• What’s one capability that will define the sector and the average African talent in the next half-decade?

In terms of capability, talent in Africa (and globally) will need increasingly robust “soft skills” (also sometimes called “durable skills”); things like critical thinking, creativity, character, leadership, communication, etc. Employers consistently say that they need these skills today, and they’re forecast to be even more important in the future.

Of course, all of us will need to be lifelong learners, with the ability to rethink, unlearn, and relearn, and operate in uncertain and evolving contexts.

• What’s your ‘GOAT moment’ in African tech?

It’s not one moment, but hundreds of small ones where I notice progress.

I’ll run into a Semicolon Techpreneurship alumnus now leading an engineering team or building a startup. I’ll watch a team lead do something impressive and remember where they began. Or I’ll sit in a demo and see someone who barely touched a laptop a year ago build a working solution to a local problem.

These are the people building African tech. They already impress me, and they’re just getting started. It’s joyful.

• Outside of work, what do you do to unwind?

Many things. I love to read, socialise, and spend time outdoors. My favourite, though, is dancing. Invite me to your next owambe, and you’ll find out.