ACCA Uganda marks ten years

 

Graduands of ACCA with Aitken Davies Richard, former

president of ACCA Global UK

 

 

By Maureen Nakatudde

At the onset of every project, there are always hurdles to overcome. Sometimes an institution is built and it takes ages to grow. However, for the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA), when it opened its office in Kampala in 2000, it attracted 155 trainees while 441 members were registered. The number has since increased to 4,050 trainees and 970 members.

Lucille Isingoma, the country manager, ACCA Uganda says in July 2007, they hosted the second ACCA Eastern African Convention. The convention which took place in Kampala drew close to 650 professional accountants. It attracted participants from Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania, Malawi, the UK and Uganda.

The three day event was held under the theme “Balancing Organisational Success with Ethical Conduct.’’ High on the agenda were discussions aimed at enabling professionals both in the public and private sectors understand and deal with ethical dilemmas, Isingoma explains.

Professor Yohannes Kinfu of Ethiopia said at the convention that ACCA was an important milestone for the advancement of professionalism in Africa.
Without accountants, almost all companies would collapse. No matter the field, every company or institution needs an accountant to thrive. Accountants play a central and critical role in business.

 

They are the most valued advisers to business owners and have a critical role to play in helping businesses and economies recover through the work they do. They ensure that that shareholders and potential investors feel confident enough to keep supporting businesses around the world.

Because of the demand for their services, it is very imperative that accountants work in the public interest. This is where ACCA comes in to help accountants sharpen their skills enable them demonstrate the highest levels of professional conduct and integrity. Apart from skills, accountants ought to be extremely shrewd in order to help their clientele alleviate risks and also provide advice to help them recover.

 

Challenges
Isingoma says the greatest challenge to the profession is continuing to build the public’s trust in the profession. Although ACCA Uganda has come a long way since 2000, the regulations and guidelines that have been put in place since then, have helped uphold the reputation of the profession globally. She, however, adds that accountants must continue to display integrity in all they do including their reporting on the financial conditions of an organisation. On the Enron scandal and the impact it had on the accounting profession Insigoma says:

“The financial practices of both Enron and Arthur Andersen (who were at the time among the prominent five accounting firms), brought about permanent changes in the accounting profession, as it led to the public’s loss of trust in accountants who are meant to play the role of watchdogs for the public.’’

Despite the temporary loss of confidence in accountants, ACCA is working tooth and nail to fully restore it. Isingoma says the global profession has measures in place to change the way accountants operate in order to prevent similar events from recurring.

It became mandatory for all professional accountancy courses to add an ethic element or assessment to their certification process.
“As a result, in 2007, we launched the newly revised ACCA Professional Qualification which now includes an Ethics Module. This module gives all ACCA students exposure to a range of ethical perspectives and includes several self-tests which require them to reflect on their own ethical behaviour and values.” Isingoma explains.

She says other major changes came through the introduction of the Sarbanes Oxley Act that restricts accountants from both audit and consultancy works to the same client. To increase management’s responsibility for financial reporting, it became a requirement for CEOs and CFOs to sign off their organisations financial statements as an attestation to their accuracy.

The last major change was the creation of the Public Accounting Company Oversight Board which took charge of regulating all members in the profession globally.

There is no digging gold without hurdles, in spite of the challenges, ACCA Uganda is ready to soar like an eagle and only the sky is the limit for its activities.