South African accountants had been playing a key role in helping accounting institutes in neighbouring countries.

The South African Institute of Chartered Accountants (SAICA) planned to extend that support in the years ahead and to engage with additional institutes on issues of common interest, Matsobane Matlwa, SAICA's executive president told delegates to the 20th anniversary conference of the Eastern, Central and Southern African Federation of Accountants (ECSAFA) in Johannesburg on Monday, which ended on Wednesday 23 September.

In this context, Matlwa drew attention to the most recent World Economic Forum's 2009/2010 World Competitiveness Report, which revealed that many African countries were still stuck at the lower levels of the rankings.

He said that while this was obviously regrettable, "it is considerably gratifying that a number of them have measurably improved their competitiveness".

Highlighting the theme of the conference — "The Role of the Accountancy Profession in the Sustainable Development of Africa" — Matlwa urged delegates to ask themselves what they, as members of the accounting profession could do to ensure that the continent's global competitiveness advanced to higher levels.

Ensure that Africa evolves

"This is not a hit parade or a league table that we are striving to climb for cosmetic purposes. Rather, the motivation for scaling greater competitive heights is surely to ensure that Africa evolves into a continent that is enviably sustainable and self sufficient."

He emphasised that SAICA had undertaken various initiatives to address some of the key issues and challenges facing the accountancy profession; issues such as skills development, enterprise development, growth, and the transformation of the profession.

These initiatives included programmes like the Thuthuka Bursary Fund and the Thuthuka Education Upliftment Fund, both of which aimed to consolidate, strategise and drive the growth and transformation efforts of the profession in South Africa.

"SAICA is justifiably proud of its ability to place between 250 and 300 fully-bursared Black African and Coloured students at selected SAICA-accredited universities in cohorts of 50 per university on special undergraduate BCom Accounting education programmes.

"We embarked on this crusade because the demographics of our profession in South Africa are not reflective of those of the country in terms of race and gender. The Thuthuka programmes aim to specifically address this imbalance."

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