In Ghana’s fast-growing tech ecosystem, a persistent hiring dilemma continues to frustrate employers. Junior data analysts may have certificates and degrees, but companies often lack confidence in their ability to perform in real working conditions.
A new Ghanaian startup, Sirius Skills, believes it has found a way to close that gap. Founded in late 2025 by Ariel Garraway, the company is building what it describes as a “job-ready junior analytics talent pipeline”.
This is designed to reduce onboarding risk and give employers clearer signals of readiness before making hiring decisions.
Rather than operating purely as a training provider or a recruitment platform, Sirius Skills is standing at the intersection of both, aligning employer expectations with practical training in a structured, performance-driven environment.
What Is Sirius Skills?
Sirius Skills is a Ghana-based startup focused on preparing junior data analytics professionals for real workplace roles. Formed in late 2025, the company delivers a structured online programme that blends applied coursework with live weekly sessions led by experienced industry practitioners.
Unlike traditional academic programmes that emphasize theoretical knowledge, Sirius Skills is built around direct alignment with job requirements.
Its core mission is to create a pipeline where employers can hire junior analysts “with more confidence and less onboarding risk,” by ensuring that candidates are assessed not just on what they know, but on how they perform.
The company is currently in its pre-launch phase, with a full rollout planned for April. Its immediate focus is refining employer-led readiness standards and proving demand through pilot cohorts before scaling further.
What Problem Are They Solving?
The challenge Sirius Skills addresses lies squarely “between education and employment.” While interest in business analytics and data analytics careers is rising, employers remain cautious about junior hires.
As Garraway explains, “While there is growing interest in business analytics and data analytics roles, many employers still struggle to hire junior talent with confidence. Candidates may have certificates or degrees, but employers often lack clear signals of job readiness, particularly around how candidates perform in real working conditions.”
This uncertainty often forces companies into two imperfect options. Larger firms may rely on graduate programmes, which can be effective but are expensive and slow to scale. Smaller or growing companies, however, often find these programmes too rigid and costly for ongoing hiring needs.
On the other hand, bootcamps and online learning platforms focus primarily on training individuals, while recruitment platforms focus on matching candidates to roles. In both scenarios, employers are left to assess readiness themselves.
“In that sense, the main competition is not any one platform,” Garraway noted, “but the fragmented system that forces employers to choose between expensive graduate programmes or high-risk junior hires without clear readiness signals.”
How Sirius Skills Operates
At the heart of Sirius Skills’ model is a structured online programme designed to mirror real professional environments. Learners complete regular, role-relevant deliverables instead of theory-based assessments.
Progress is measured through practical outputs that reflect how junior analysts are expected to function within actual teams.
“Learners also participate in a structured community environment that reinforces accountability and collaboration. This setup mirrors professional working conditions and helps employers assess readiness beyond technical knowledge alone,” Garraway said.
The emphasis is not simply on technical skill acquisition but on work simulation, how learners manage deadlines, communicate findings, collaborate with peers, and produce job-ready outputs.
By doing so, the company aims to transform training into a measurable demonstration of workplace capability.
Employers’ Involvement: Training Meets Hiring
One of Sirius Skills’ defining features is direct employer involvement from the outset. Rather than designing a generic curriculum and hoping it meets industry needs, the company works closely with employers through sponsored pilot cohorts.
Under this model, small groups of junior analysts are trained over a defined period, typically three to four months. Employers sponsor these cohorts and help shape readiness criteria aligned with their specific hiring expectations.
They are also given access to candidate profiles, portfolios, and demonstrated outputs that reflect clearly defined job-readiness standards.
This approach effectively allows companies to observe and evaluate candidates before making hiring commitments, reducing uncertainty and bridging the traditional disconnect between training institutions and recruiters.
“These early interactions have helped refine job-readiness criteria and pilot structure,” Garraway noted, highlighting how ongoing employer feedback shapes the evolving model.
How Sirius Skills Generates Revenue
Sirius Skills currently generates revenue primarily through employer-sponsored pilot programmes. Companies pay to sponsor small cohorts of junior analytics talent, engaging with and assessing candidates throughout the structured training period.
“Employers pay to sponsor small cohorts of junior analytics talent, typically over a three to four month period, which allows them to engage with and evaluate candidates while helping shape readiness criteria aligned with their hiring needs,” Garraway explained.
Over time, the company plans to introduce recurring revenue streams through annual employer access to its talent pipeline software. This would allow organizations to continuously review and recruit from new cohorts without launching a fresh pilot each time.
At this stage, the company remains pre-seed and founder-bootstrapped. Revenues are modest, and the business is not yet profitable.
“The near-term priority is proving the model through successful pilots and employer outcomes, with revenue and profitability expected to scale as pilots convert into longer-term employer relationships following launch,” Garraway said.
Ghana First: Why It Matters
Ghana was intentionally selected as the starting point due to its expanding tech ecosystem and increasing demand for data analytics talent. By launching locally, Sirius Skills can refine its employer-led standards within a growing but manageable market.
Looking ahead, the company envisions expansion into other African markets where similar hiring challenges exist, including Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa.
However, expansion will be demand-led, prioritising markets with strong employer interest and clear signals of junior analytics hiring needs.
The broader significance of Sirius Skills’ approach lies in its attempt to restructure how junior hiring is de-risked across emerging markets.
By integrating training, performance evaluation, and employer collaboration into a single pipeline, the company is challenging the fragmented system that currently separates education providers from hiring decision-makers.
If successful, Sirius Skills could offer a replicable model for aligning Africa’s growing pool of analytics talent with the evolving demands of its digital economy, turning uncertainty into measurable readiness, and potential into performance.
Talking Points
Sirius Skills presents a compelling market-facing solution to one of Africa’s most persistent workforce challenges, the credibility gap between certification and demonstrated competence. Yet, its long-term viability will depend heavily on execution discipline and measurable employer outcomes.
The model is strategically sound, that’s aligning training directly with employer-defined readiness criteria reduces information asymmetry in junior hiring and shifts risk from post-hire onboarding to pre-hire evaluation.
In theory, this could lower recruitment costs and shorten time-to-productivity, especially for SMEs that cannot sustain expensive graduate programmes.
However, the approach is operationally intensive. Maintaining consistent training quality, securing ongoing employer sponsorship, and scaling without diluting standards will be difficult, particularly in markets where companies are cost-sensitive and junior analytics roles are still evolving.
Its biggest competitive threat is not traditional bootcamps, as noted, but scalability friction, the challenge of turning a high-touch, employer-led pilot model into a repeatable, tech-enabled system across multiple African markets.
If Sirius Skills can prove that its cohorts convert into high-retention hires with demonstrably lower onboarding friction, it could become a category-defining workforce infrastructure layer. If not, it risks becoming another training intermediary in an already crowded ecosystem.
________________________
Bookmark Techparley.com for the most insightful technology news from the African continent.
Follow us on X/Twitter @Techparleynews, on Facebook at Techparley Africa, on LinkedIn at Techparley Africa, or on Instagram at Techparleynews
