An Accountant in Uganda

So far my blog has concentrated on my impressions of living in Uganda and the places I've visited. But as in the title of the blog I'm an accountant in Uganda! I came out here to do an accountancy placement. After about 3 months at work I'm beginning to feel that I'm starting to understand the role.

For the last 2 weeks I've been travelling around Uganda seeing all of the partner organisations to document and review their financial systems and consider what I can do to help with capacity building. My placement organisation has introduced some global minimum standards for the partner organisations. These are fairly basic and include having a cashbook, third party documentation for payments, monthly bank reconcilations and cash counts. I've been collecting evidence from the partners for the minimum standards. Where these are not already being met I'll be working with the partners to put them in place as a priority.

I've also been working with the programme team to review the activities that are being done against the workplans and the expenditure to date. We've had some really useful meetings with the partner organisation teams to consider the balances left on 1st January 2014 and discuss where the budget needs to be re-profiled to meet the outcomes agreed. Also making sure that programme funding is not being moved to administration and that changes are within the parameters set by the funder.

It's good to get out of Kampala and see the country and meet lots of people. The work being done by the partner organisations is so worthwhile. Outcomes are around increasing the number of families that have 3 or more different crops to eat and reducing the number of households with an income of less than 140,000 Ugandan Shillings per year. That is just £35 and is well below the Millennium Goal level of $1 per day.

There are also programmes where the outcomes focus on reducing and solving land disputes. I'm still trying to understand the land issues with several systems for assessing land ownership. There are also several methods for resolving any disputed land with courts as the last resort.

It feels like I'm on a steep learning curve but know it will be worthwhile as I will be better equipped to help the partner organisations when I understand the issues and challenges they face on a daily basis.