Education:
After primary school education (1972 – 1978) and secondary School (1980 – 1984), I joined a tertiary institution (Uganda College of Commerce) in 1985 to study Business Administration in order to acquire practical skills to enable me find employment faster since my parents were financially constrained. I worked part-time during my college days and later formal employment in 1991. From my savings, I decided to pursue professional accountancy course (Accounts Technician Course) with Institute of Certified Public Accountants of Kenya (ICPA-K). In 1999 I then joined the Association of Certified Chartered Accountant (ACCA) UK since it’s a global body compared to ICPA-K. I managed to complete the course in 5 years (duration is usually 10 years) and obtain membership in 2006 and Fellowship status (FCCA) in 2011. I was admitted to the Certified Public Accountants (CPA) Uganda membership as well as a member of the Auditor General Office of the government of Uganda in 2012.
In 2009, I enrolled for MBA with Oxford Brookes University, UK and was awarded the MBA in 2013. My project during the MBA studies was on establishing a Procurement and Supply Chain department in my organization; a project that was finally adopted by my employer. The consultancy for the award of the MBA was on Effective Budget management in INGOs. The consultancy was particularly useful to me as Country Finance Manager in a country with chronic insecurity. The MBA therefore, equipped me with critical skills in my career as the modules included Leadership development, Strategic Planning & Strategic thinking, Resource Acquisition, Planning & Management, Change Management and Human Resources development.
Over the years, I have aacquired additional skills through formal training and workshops such as a 5-day ‘Training of Finance Trainers’ organized by MANGO (UK) - Nairobi (2013), a training that has equipped me with immense skills that I now use in training finance and non-finance staff, including of partners. A 5-day Fraud Detection and Prevention training (Mozambique, 2009) was particularly helpful in strengthening controls in the organizations I worked for. Skills acquired from the Activity-based and Result- based budgeting workshop (Kampala, 2005) was extremely useful in effective budgeting for grants funded projects. Similarly, the foundational training in the grants management by SDF (Arusha, (2005), followed by training on Global Funds Financial Management (S.Africa – 2009) and ECHO/EC Budgeting and Financial Reporting (Nairobi, 2010) equipped me to better manage funding by key donors. The review and testing of the Cash Transfer and CaLP Manual (Oxfam, 2011) also equipped me to effectively manage cash transfer and voucher programming particularly in emergency responses.
I regularly update my skills through various Continuous Professional Development (CPD) online courses (www.accaglobalcpd.net) such as Leadership skills for Accountant, Activity based management, Fraud and