3rd Africa congress calls for higher standards and more women

This article was first published in the July/August 2015 international edition of Accounting and Business magazine.

While many economies in Africa are expanding fast, accountants agree that the continent has to build its business reporting and administration to make sure the growth is sustainable. Indeed, the 3rd Africa Congress of Accountants (ACOA), staged in Mauritius from 11 to 14 May, with ACCA as a gold sponsor, heard that this essential work is needed urgently, even as some countries remain marred by severe socio-political unrest, economic instability, poverty, famine and disease. 

Only by laying down good accounting practice from the outset can Africa’s newly growing industries integrate themselves into global economic networks. Africa’s economy is expected to grow by 4% this year, according to the World Bank. Growth is predicted to pick up in 2016 to reach 4.5%.

Speakers at the congress were optimistic that this preparatory work has kicked off in many countries, so that accountants can play an increasingly significant role in African businesses. Accounting ethics, training and development, the promotion of women, economic sustainability, infrastructure development and transparency were among the themes discussed.

ACCA president Anthony Harbinson FCCA said: ‘A well-run organisation is less prone to loss, inefficiency and the risk of fraud, and with the public sector still facing the implications of the global economic crisis of seven years ago, anything that we can do to provide public services to as many people as possible has to be welcome.’ 

Taiwo Oyedele FCCA, an ACCA Council member and head of tax and corporate advisory services at PwC Nigeria, said such capacity-building posed ‘challenges and opportunities for professional bodies such as ACCA, learning providers and businesses that will need to offer high-level learning and development support.’ Such work is essential ‘to ensure that Africa can fulfil its much talked about potential’, he added.

A key session in this regard was a debate on the development of sustainable national institutions and boosting human capacity. Here, speakers focused primarily on the roles of African accounting professionals and how they expect the profession to evolve in the coming years. A key concern was ensuring that accounting professionals do not become part of the problem, hindering the development of transparency rather than helping create open reporting, and committing ethical lapses of judgment.

Caroline Kigen, chair of the professional accountancy organisation development committee (PAODC) of the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC), stressed that the benefits of the growth in the continent be shared equitably to promote social stability. Accounting professionals could help in ensuring this takes place, she said.

Integrated reporting

One means of achieving this was highlighted by Jamil Ampomah, ACCA director for sub-Saharan Africa, who chaired a session on integrated reporting: ‘The integrated report should be a concise communication about how an organisation’s strategy, governance, performance and prospects, in the context of its external environment, lead to the creation of value in the short, medium and long term,’ he stressed. Such reports could help rebuild investors’ trust in corporate information, damaged by the global financial crisis, he said, noting investors ‘believed corporate environmental, social and governance performance information was not provided in any meaningful way that could be compared with figures for their peers’. These concerns can be especially damaging in Africa, where investment is needed desperately.

Jean Moira Awinja Wameyo, fiduciary services manager of the African Development Bank, agreed business and accounting systems should promote a more equitable share of wealth created by economic growth in Africa: ‘We have growth, but that doesn’t always translate into better lives for people,’ she said.

She said that the African continent has fewer than 100,000 professional accountants serving a population that already exceeds one billion. The congress heard how this meant there was a need, not just for more accounting education and training, but for the right values and ethics to be encouraged among African accounting professionals, creating an accounting infrastructure that boosts an effective business culture.

Awinja Wameyo called for greater synergy between African accounting professional organisations to help achieve these goals.

Revenue collection

Effective taxation was another key issue much discussed at the congress. The weakness of revenue collection in Africa has hamstrung the development of effective regulation and government in the past, but if effective, can provide a stable flow of revenue to finance development priorities such as strengthening physical infrastructure and good governance.

‘The challenge for African countries is finding the optimal balance between a tax regime that is business and investment friendly, and one which can leverage enough revenue for public service delivery to enhance the attractiveness of the economy,’ said Lee Burns, expert on corporate taxation and professor at Australia’s University of Sydney. He was the main speaker on a session on taxation and its impact on development in Africa. 

Professor Burns explained that ‘with the pace of development in Africa, very often taxation laws have not kept up with the pace of economic development’.

Fundamentally, tax policy shapes the environment in which international trade and investment take place, he noted. 

Of course, cutting across all these detailed and professional issues are the social realities of an African continent that still can be held back by tradition. One particular problem in many African countries is the tough obstacles put in the way of women becoming professionals, and – of concern especially to the congress – accountancy professionals.

Need for more women

Speaking on the theme of women and accountancy, current IFAC president Olivia Kirtley recalled that some decades ago, when she joined the profession in the US, the number of women working in accounting was very low. But while that was no longer the case in the US and many other developed and emerging market countries, few women had become accountants in Africa. As a result, Kirtley urged African accountancy organisations to encourage the recruitment of women.

‘Retaining women and advancing them into senior roles remains a challenge in our profession. A number of African nations have shown great strides in female presentation in  government,’ Kirtley noted – for instance in Liberia, where Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is president. (Indeed, shortly after the conference, Mauritius elected its first female president - Dr Ameenah Gurib-Fakim.) Female accountants could also reach the top of their professions in Africa, she argued, where their leadership styles could complement those of men.

But for the moment female professionals in Africa are still hindered by pay discrimination, gender stereotypes and glass ceilings. She proposed that female accountancy professionals in Africa strengthen their own networks, develop initiatives to improve their skills and experience, identify obstacles to their professional development and create plans to remove them.

One key battleground for this struggle is Nigeria, now regarded as Africa’s largest economy after a statistical recalculation in April 2014. May Ifeoma Nwoye of the Association of National Accountants of Nigeria, a professor in business administration at the Ibrahim Badamasi Babangia University (IBB) in Nigeria, said her country was a prime example of how discrimination impeded female professional development. ‘The accounting field is only one of the many fields where female professionals are trying to make their way in, but there is a host of other fields which they want to be part of,’ she pointed out.

Elizabeth Adegite, national president of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN), stressed the need for African industries and business sectors to recruit more female executives to offer contrasting assessments and acumen, giving a competitive edge to companies dominated by men. ‘This would reduce gender-related discrimination and allow African firms to benefit from the huge potential of female executives,’ she said. 

Villen Anganan, journalist based in Port Louis, Mauritiu