Accountants in Rwanda: cooler than ever

In the U.S., accountants have a reputation for being boring number-crunchers — the last people you would invite to a dinner party. Accountants also tend to get short shrift in the public imagination, as the only times you hear the words “innovative accountant” usually accompany the words “massive corporate fraud.”

Good thing nobody has told one of our scholarship recipients, Theophile Namahoro, that his desired profession is so unfairly maligned. Theophile is a second-year student studying accounting at the School of Finance and Banking. When I asked him what he aspires to in his career, he said that he wanted to be an extremely well-trained accountant. He has even started thinking about the certifications he would like to receive from the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA, the largest global professional accountancy body, for the non-CPAs among you).

Theophile’s personal story is emblematic of the obstacles our students overcome on their path to ORI. When the genocide began, his family went into hiding in houses and fields, but the militias eventually found his father, who was severely beaten. His father survived the genocide, but died a year afterwards because of complications from the beating. Theophile’s mother — who lost every member of her family — suffers from post-traumatic illness and cannot work. Theophile’s incredible persistence enabled him to graduate high school with a focus in accounting and, on top of everything, he overcame an obstacle not faced by our other students — a car accident that hospitalized him for several months during his senior year. Here’s Theophile at our latest all-student meeting:

Why is Theophile’s desire to crunch numbers a good thing for Rwanda? A 2006 article in the main paper here said that there were 194 accountants in the entire country. At the time, the government estimated that there was a shortage of 66 accountants but, given the pace of economic change here over the last two years, I imagine that the deficit is much greater than that.

Since arriving here, I have been talking to people about the future of Rwanda’s economy, and one of the recurring themes is the absence of trained financial professionals who can give an accurate assessment of a company or enterprise’s finances. For potential investors, the absence of well-done financial statements makes it difficult to determine an organization’s financial history or prospects for growth. There are probably dozens of businesses — including agricultural enterprises — that have tremendous earning potential, but might have trouble attracting investments or bank loans because of the state of their financial records. A World Bank study on private capital flows to developing countries found that the “lack of qualified accountants and auditors” is a “common problem” that inhibits the growth of emerging markets such as Rwanda’s.

Theophile is one of 22 students ORI now supports at the School of Finance and Banking (SFB) in Kigali; 16 of the 22 are students in our most recently selected class of scholarship recipients. So while he may not have chosen the most glamorous of professions, Theophile and his SFB classmates are going to become the highly skilled financial professionals who will play a central role in the growth of Rwanda’s economy. Accountants in Rwanda may become rock stars after all.

Isoko Blog