More than 1,000 internal auditors and experts from Africa and beyond are to converge on Accra next month to deliberate on professional development and promotion of good governance on the continent.
This is the second time that the Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA-Ghana) would be hosting the gathering, dubbed African Federation of the Institute of Internal Auditors (AFIIA) Conference, having first hosted it in 2017.
Now in its ninth year, the annual conference instituted in 2014 and rotated amongst African countries, is scheduled for May 22 to 26, on the theme “Sustainability through innovation.”
At a press launch in Accra yesterday, the AFIIA 2023 Organisation Committee Chairman, Richard Ntim, said the conference would afford the industry an opportunity to press home the need to explore new ways of thinking in order to find solutions to challenges facing the continent.
“The world is currently facing unprecedented challenges in practically all spheres of life, including climate change, unsustainable resource utilisation, global inequality, and the resultant effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is therefore imperative that we break boundaries and identify innovation solutions,” he said.
Mr Ntim said the conference would involve a training session named “AFIIA University”, targeted at practising internal auditors; a governance forum for board members, audit committee members, chief executives, director-generals and team members while the main conference was for all people.
With May being the International Internal Audit month, he called on all stakeholders to help improve and break myths on internal auditing as well as reduce poor governance for public good.
The IIA President, Mrs Harriet Karikari, said capacity building through the conference was important to upholding integrity and high performance in the profession.
Touching on the theme for the conference, she said, the advent of technology had brought to the fore new ways of executing their task, thus, the need to be abreast of happenings in order to be effective.
“We know that the times we are in is digitalisation and if you don’t innovate, you will be out of business. You’ll be out of work. There are ways that we need to find so that we enhance our growth,” she said.
On the Internal Audit bill that is expected to streamline the profession, Mrs Karikari said stakeholder engagements were ongoing as a part of a holistic approach to make it robust.
The Director-General of the Internal Audit Agency (IAA), Dr Eric Oduro Osae, described the conference as an excellent opportunity to discover innovative and new solutions to meet the challenges in the field.
Noting that good governance was key to the development of Africa, he urged participants to benchmark and challenge themselves to do better to help safeguard Ghana’s resources.
“Together, let us build a stronger, more agile, and more resilient internal auditing community that is better equipped to tackle the challenges of today and tomorrow,” he said.
BY JONATHAN DONKOR
