The Directorate of Programming, Budgeting, Finance and Accounting (PBFA) of the African Union Commission (AUC) organized a meeting yesterday 9 June 2016 at the AUC Headquarters Addis Ababa, Ethiopia with International Partners highlighting pertinent areas of its strategies to  transform the Finance function by 2018. The meeting was highly attended by International partners including United States of America, United Kingdom, Sweden, Germany, Norway, Canada, Netherlands and Denmark Embassies as well as the World Bank and the European Union. The objective of the meeting was to set a platform for communication and strengthening of the Partnership between the AUC and its International Partners. 

Speaking during the meeting, Mrs. Assietou Sylla Diouf, the Director of PBFA expressed appreciation to Partners for their continued support to the AUC over the years and for taking time off their busy schedules to attend the highly crucial meeting. Mrs. Diouf highlighted some of the achievements of the PBFA within the past 5 years which included implementation of the SAP ERP and its roll out to a number of AU field offices, adoption of the International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS), addressing the cash-carrying risk and the development of crucial policies such as revised financial rules and regulations, the fraud and anti-corruption policy and the enterprise risk management policy and among others.

However, despite the achievements attained so far, the Directorate is desirous, as part of its continuous improvement initiatives, to carry out projects to transform the Finance function into a “GO TO” Business Partner by 2018.

The Director presented the Directorate’s strategy over the next three years (2016 – 2018) which include, among others:

Restoring the Accounting function to the expected standards in terms of operational processes and reporting
Revisiting the Information System Architecture by deploying SAP to all AU Organs and implementing the SAP Grant Management and Business Planning and Consolidations Modules.
Revisiting the end to end Budget process.
Design and development of a comprehensive financial framework based on risk approach.

The Director further solicited the support of the Partners to enable the actualization of the strategy.

The meeting had significant contributions and feedback from the international partners, giving them insight into proposed plans to strengthen the Finance function so as to further enhance the Commission’s capacity to deliver on its objectives.