Finance leaders were recognized by ACCA Uganda and Deloitte at the 5th successful edition of the Chief Financial Officer Awards held at the Kampala Serena Hotel under the theme “Finance leaders as drivers of sustainability” on Thursday 10th December.
This year’s awards focused on highlighting the role of Heads of Finance in business growth and recovery in light of the pandemic and its impacts on businesses locally and globally and the ongoing digital revolution.
Speaking at the Awards ceremony, Charlotte Kukunda- Interim Head of ACCA Uganda said, “When we set out to do this initiative, we were looking at generating a critical mass of leaders because we had already anticipated that CFOs were no longer just accountants but were going to be leaders. If you look at the past, everybody that has been celebrated on this stage as an overall CFO award winner is in a different place all together. It’s not just about their professional and career success but we are seeking making an impact in the communities where they are and as ACCA, we’ve now gone full head on with the UN SDGs to align our programs with what the development goals aspire to achieve and that takes into consideration the CFO awards.”
Kukunda further highlighted on key learnings from the past CFO awards processes noting that;
“While we’ve registered growth year on year since 2017, some areas continue to challenge us. We commit to continue learning and make it better every year. Areas like the SME category continue to attract low number of nominations which makes us wonder if we as finance professionals are really supporting the SME category yet the SME sector is the backbone of this country. Congratulations to the Not for Profit and Public Sector categories. We are seeing more nominations there. The stellar category is the Young CFO award which came through strongly and spoke to the country’s demographics and our membership which is over 60% below 50 years.”
Addressing the Finance leaders as Chief Guest, Tony Otoa- Executive Director Stanbic Business Incubator Ltd said,
“We need to ask ourselves a pertinent question. What’s wrong with leadership today? Personal leadership, professional leadership, community leadership? Are we doing things for ourselves or doing things in a sustainability way that it reflects beyond us, our generation, ourselves onto our children or the people that we will entrust our roles to? Strong leadership plays a critical role in ensuring organizations stays financially adaptable and can build resilience and sustainability in today’s fierce market,” adding that,
“It’s important to understand that the people in an organization best positioned to develop structure from complex processes as well as create sustainable and financial success in businesses are CFOs. Financial leadership means that the Chief Financial Officers perform in a way that brings competitive advantage to a company not only especially during the times like we’ve been in the past 2 years. Now more than ever, the value of CFOs is being seen.”
The awards registered over 200 nominations. Full list of the 5th edition of ACCA, Deloitte CFO Award winners;
- CFO of the Year Award– Stevens Mwanje, CFO NSSF Uganda
- Not-for-profit Award -Marie Solome Nassiwa, CFO at Baylor College of Medicine
- Sustainability Award -Julius Katanaka, Head of Finance at Wazalendo SACCO Ltd
- Young CFO Award – Kezia Dorothy Asiimwe, Head of Finance at Equity Bank
- Finance Transformation Award– Denis Ochieng, Director Finance and Business Operations at Uganda Development Bank Ltd
- Public Sector Award – Emmanuel Mugagga, CFO at UNOC
- Strategic Execution Award – Martha Mukasa, Head of Finance at Mengo Hospital
- SME Award -None of the nominees met the judging criteria.
