Semicolon, an edtech focused on producing skilled tech people, announced that it has closed $1.2 million in a seed round of funding. The seed funding said to be oversubscribed, had participation from angels and VCs like Launch Africa Ventures and Consonance Investment Managers.
Founded in 2019 by Sam Immanuel, a software engineer, Semicolon provides trainings to prepare young people with the appropriate digital skills to operate in Africa’s growing technology industry. The company trains software engineers and techpreneurs to enable profitable and inclusive economic growth.
Sam Immanuel says that the funds will be used to ramp up its project delivery capacity, training, and talent management.
Nigeria is regarded as Africa’s largest ICT market with 82% of the continent’s telecoms subscribers and 29% of internet usage. The government of Nigeria in November 2019 launched the National Digital Economy Policy and Strategy (2020-2030) aimed at repositioning the Nigerian economy toward opportunities that digital technologies provide and to diversify the economy away from dependence on the oil and gas sector.
In 2020, Google and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) in a joint report disclosed that there are only 690,000 professional developers in Africa and that the top training pathways were being self-taught and through university programs. This figure represents 0.2% of the 1.3 billion people in the continent. The report reinforces the need to grow more tech talent to strengthen the ecosystem that is capable of changing the course of Africa’s history.
With the opportunities that abound, several startups have sprung up with different formats to try to attend to this gap.
At the moment, Semicolon provides a training programme that lasts 12 months and costs ₦2,795,000 inclusive of VAT and this covers accommodation, meals, healthcare insurance, learning materials and laptop. The company claims it takes in tens of young and driven youths; who are usually complete newbies and with diverse backgrounds, to begin the one-year software engineering journey. So far, Semicolon has trained about 300 people; with many of them already building innovative solutions in paid employment and as techpreneurs.
Other players providing training programs to avail individuals with the right skills include Decagon and TalentQL amongst others.
