‘We’re geared to capacitate our members’
THE Chartered Governance and Accountancy Institute in Zimbabwe (CGI) recently held its annual conference in Victoria Falls where a number of issues were discussed. Deputy business editor Kudzai Kuwaza caught up with the institute’s chief executive Lovemore Gomera (LG, pictured) to discuss various issues, including the objectives of the conference, the challenges of the brain drain and plans for next year. Here are excerpts of the discussion: of the theme that was “Marching Towards Vision 2030”, it’s a theme that we carried from last year’ conference where we had His Excellency the President (Emmerson Mnangagwa) attending our conference and opening it.
It has to do with how our professionals, both accountants and governance professionals, how they can partake in helping the government and all other private sector players to make sure that the economy ticks and we achieve the upper middle income society as promulgated by the vision 2030.
What have been the major changes since you changed the name of your organisation?
So as you know we are part of the global family, we are CGI Global and within CGI there are nine divisions and we are one of the divisions but in Zimbabwe we incorporated as an Act of Parliament in 1971 and as you are aware we celebrated our 50th anniversary last year, that is why his excellency was here we were celebrating our golden jubilee.
e name change really it’s the rebranding that has happened at CGI Global, there was realisation that all we do pertains to governance really. We were chartered secretaries, we were risk compliance officers, we were accountancy and so on. But in a nutshell, it’s all about governance. So the strategic thrust that the CGI Global has now taken is to be champions in governance. I can assure you that our members, by training and qualification, they are the best in terms of governance and accountancy.
How have you contributed against corruption?
So with good corporate governance anywhere in the world, if you observe good corporate governance all these ills that you talk about, corruption, inefficiency in the administration of any company or public entity are eroded, eradicated by observing good corporate governance tenets.
However from the institute perspective, we have been working very closely with the public sector. I can tell you now that we have got a Memorandum of Understanding (Mou) with the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission. We have been training the Zimbabwe Republic Police with whom we have got a Mou. We have got a Mou with the Deposit Protection Corporation.
We have been training together with the corporate governance unit, all to do with just bringing about good corporate governance both in the private and public sector so that people can observe ethical behaviours. ey behave ethically and that will eradicate corruption.
What has been the impact of the brain drain on your profession?
It is very rampant; we have a lot of our members that have gone into the Diaspora. e Covid situation did not help their cause because now even the people that are actually within Zimbabwe are now being employed internationally by virtue of remote working and so on.
But our members have found space elsewhere because of the demand of their skills and competence and as you champions in governance and accountancy our members really are in high demand but again as I have said on the flip side, it also helps the country because these are people that are going out there and being exposed to international best practices and I think what we need to do is to work on attracting them back so that they can work together with the rest of the team that is within the country to make sure that the blueprints that we have put in place are achieved.
So would you say the brain drain is a double edged sword?
I would say it’s both ways like