As cybercrime becomes one of the greatest threats to Africa’s digital economy, Ash Nelson Partners has established itself at the forefront of financial crime prevention, fraud management, and cybersecurity. Known for pioneering real-time compliance reporting frameworks, fraud detection systems with significantly reduced false positives, and national readiness programs for Tier 1 financial institutions, the company has gained recognition from industry stakeholders and regulators alike.
By combining Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) solutions with advanced managed security services and enterprise fraud management platforms, Ash Nelson Partners empowers banks, payment processors, and government institutions to safeguard assets and maintain public trust. Sheila Ash Nelson, the company’s CEO, in an interview with BusinessDay’s Chinwe Michael, reflects on her journey from sales to cybersecurity, the challenges shaping Africa’s digital safety, and how the company is standing out in a competitive market.
Tell us about yourself and how the journey began?
I was born in Nigeria, but I grew up in the UK. Sales has always been in my DNA, my mom says, even at 13, I was already finding things to sell. I like to describe myself as a career salesperson. My move to Nigeria was personal. After my grandfather passed in December 2011, he left behind my grandmother, one of the loves of my life, who had been married to him almost all her life. She didn’t know a world without him, and someone needed to be close to her as she navigated grief and depression. Of everyone in my family, I was best positioned to relocate, so I began looking for contracts and opportunities that would bring me back.
Professionally, my first experience in Nigeria came around 2014 with Venture Garden Group, a company doing significant work in fintech and government automation. That exposure taught me how business works here from a relationship perspective, and it also ignited my hunger for technology.
By 2017, with that spark, we launched Ash Nelson Partners. Our first goal was to help fintechs monetise their innovations. Nigerian tech talent is brilliant, and ideas are everywhere, but the challenge is converting them into sustainable, revenue-driven businesses. Soon, however, we realised many startups were constrained by capacity and scalability. That insight led us to pivot toward cybersecurity. We began with enterprise fraud deployments, then expanded into broader cybersecurity solutions, and eventually into core technology offerings. Today, our mission sits at the intersection of fraud management, cybersecurity, and empowering local tech talent.
You’re now at the forefront of cybersecurity. What threats are you currently seeing in Nigeria and across Africa, and how is the company addressing them?
The threats we encounter tend to fall into three main buckets. First, insider-related breaches are a huge challenge. Someone within the organisation, often trusted, becomes compromised and poses a risk. This is especially prevalent in financial institutions and regulated industries.
Second, ransomware is a growing concern. Organisations that warehouse sensitive or strategic information, personal data, financial records, or government data are prime targets. Ransomware can cripple them overnight.
Third, we see opportunistic breaches that stem from simple skill gaps or poor security investment. Many times, these are preventable, but in our region, businesses often wait for something to go wrong before taking security seriously.
At Ash Nelson Partners, we emphasise two areas: strengthening the human element through upskilling and adopting technologies that support rapid detection, containment, and recovery. We remind clients that cybersecurity is not about achieving 100% protection because if someone truly wants to breach you, it’s a matter of when, not if.
Can you share an example of the real impact of your work?
When an organisation suffers a cyber incident, we step in with forensic investigations to trace the breach, identify vulnerabilities, and implement measures to prevent recurrence. Prevention, however, is always our preference.
A good example I can talk about is our work with the Community of CISOs for Nigerian Financial Institutions (CISO NFI). Together, we designed and executed cyber drills to test banks’ readiness against ransomware. These were time-bound exercises, simulating real attack scenarios, where banks had to identify ransomware, contain it, and restore operations—sometimes within as little as three hours.
This was significant because Nigerian banks are a critical national infrastructure. For years, the assumption was that teams “knew what to do” in the event of a breach. Our exercises replaced assumptions with verified assessments, revealing gaps, strengths, and areas for improvement. With involvement from CBN and NIBSS, the program created a benchmark for readiness in the sector.
The tangible outcome was a measurable improvement in resilience across multiple banks. That’s the kind of systemic impact we are most proud of.
Given the competition in cybersecurity, what makes your company stand out?
Our differentiator lies in how we merge innovation with local talent. The core of our mission is to infect Nigeria and Africa with innovation. We don’t just resell foreign technologies for commission. Instead, we insist that every deployment builds local capacity.
The federal government is pushing a Nigeria-first agenda, and that aligns with our approach. We expose Nigerian engineers to cutting-edge tools, get them certified, and ensure they can run deployments themselves. This prevents dependency on foreign consultants who fly in, charge exorbitant fees, and disappear.
For instance, in enterprise projects, we don’t accept partners who refuse to train our people. The expectation is that local teams must be able to operate, maintain, and optimise the solutions. This not only lowers costs for clients but also strengthens Nigeria’s tech ecosystem.
Furthermore, our people understand the peculiarities of local institutions. Global OEMs are experts at their software, but they may not grasp the nuanced challenges in a Nigerian bank or government office. Our talent bridges that gap, tailoring deployments to local realities.
In short, our strength is talent—leveraging local expertise, institutionalising knowledge, and ensuring Africa is not left behind in innovation.
Let’s talk about fraud detection. Your solutions are known for their low false-positive rates. How do you achieve that, and what impact has it had?
Fraud management is complex, with many moving parts. One of the biggest pain points in fraud detection has been the reliance on external vendors to adjust systems. Historically, if a bank wanted to tweak a fraud rule, they had to wait for the OEM—sometimes weeks.
Our solution changes that. We give banks direct control over their fraud rules. They can test, configure, and adjust based on their risk appetite in real time. If they only want critical alerts, they can fine-tune the system accordingly. This flexibility significantly reduces false positives because the bank isn’t forced into rigid, one-size-fits-all rules.
The impact is huge. Fraud teams become more agile, investigations are sharper, and resources are better allocated. This also means financial institutions can respond dynamically to new fraud scenarios, rather than waiting for an external vendor to intervene.
Just as businesses adopt AI to scale, cybercriminals are weaponising it to accelerate breaches. This is changing the game. Historically, security was rule-based—detect something, create a rule to stop it, and move on. But with AI-driven threats and zero-day attacks, that’s no longer enough. Adaptive, behavior-based detection is now essential.
Can you share a success story where your fraud management solution helped protect financial assets?
Insiders manipulate systems in a number of significant fraud cases in Nigeria, then cover their tracks by deleting logs or altering records to hide their involvement.
Our solutions eliminate that loophole. Insiders manipulate systems in a number of significant fraud cases in Nigeria, then cover their tracks by deleting logs or altering records to hide their involvement. Nothing can be deleted. Every action is recorded and traceable. This has a psychological effect; staff know “big brother is watching,” which reduces temptation. And in cases where fraud attempts occur, it gives investigators a full, tamper-proof trail.