This month saw ACCA president Ayla Majid FCCA visit Africa to give a keynote speech at the biennial Africa Congress of Accountants in Kigali, Rwanda, where she also presented highlights of ACCA’s recently launched flagship report Global Talent Trends 2025.
Featured in AB this month, this comprehensive research has found that members, particularly younger generations, are increasingly seeing their accountancy qualification as a springboard to starting their own business, and it is a view that is more pronounced in Africa than anywhere else in the world. Entrepreneurialism – or at least aspirations in that direction – is on the rise among our membership, alongside concerns about the cost of living and salaries, AI skills and workplace wellbeing. Find out more.
Doing his bit to meet the needs of African entrepreneurs is our interviewee in this issue. As CFO of Ecobank Cameroon, with oversight of the finance function in 18 African countries in total, Emmanuel Wakili FCCA has built an impressive career in the banking sector in West and Central Africa. Something of a trailblazer, he was the first student to complete the ACCA qualification in his native Cameroon. Read his story.
With the global tariff situation still deeply uncertain, our CPD technical article takes a look at the resulting disruption to financial reporting. We also find out about the importance of an ethical framework to support sustainability disclosures and what the new set of global ethics standards for sustainability means for those preparing reports.
In further tech news, a Thomson-Reuters report about the use of generative artificial intelligence by professionals reveals that specialised tools are being baked into workflows, and a vast majority of respondents expect the technology to be central to their daily work within five years. Find out how GenAI is being applied by different sectors within the finance profession in particular.
Finally, we turn our attention to Fifa’s Club World Cup in the US this summer. Controversy and consternation are growing as Fifa struggles to secure tax concessions for participating teams, which are liable to pay millions of dollars to US tax authorities on top of tax payable in their home countries. With the majority of the 32 participants based outside the US, we look at how the absence of tax relief could significantly diminish the tournament’s financial attractions.
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