Three Ghanaians have emerged top globally in the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) exams. Kwaku Osei-Mensah, emerged the World’s best performing student in ACCA’s Audit and Assurance Paper out of over 12,000 students who sat the exam globally in the September 2017 exams.
Speaking to Kwaku Osei-Mensah, he could not hide his joy, “I couldn’t believe it initially. The feeling was great. I just couldn’t contain it. For me, from the beginning I have been putting in my best.”
“For students sitting the exams, you should focus, it’s all about you, you have to work hard” he added.
Another top prizewinner was Desmond Bredu who emerged the world’s second best performing student in Advanced Audit and Assurance out of over 8000 students who sat the exams globally in March 2018.
Alex Dankyi Asare emerged the 3rd Best Performing Student in Corporate Reporting amongst over 8500 students who sat the exams globally in March 2017.
These global winners were amongst 80 other prizewinners who were awarded at the just ended ACCA Ghana Annual Students’ Summit and Job Fair 2018.
The Summit which was under the theme “Becoming a Strategic Business Leader” saw close to two thousand participants throng the Accra International Conference Centre with keen interest in understanding ACCA’s new qualification and ways to improve their employability skills.
The Summit began with a Job Fair and a CV Clinic facilitated by ACCA’s Business Development Team and Job Agency Jobberman.
The main event commenced with a presentation on Why ACCA is Changing its Qualification with key emphasis on the research about the future of the Accountancy Profession. Participants were elated to hear about the four key drivers- Increased regulation and stronger governance, Advances in digital technology, Higher expectations, and Continued globalization and how these crystalize into seven skills and qualities needed to be a successful finance professional (The 7 Quotients)
This became the foundation for the panel discussion which featured Charlotte Forson (Audit & Assurance Partner of Deloitte & Touche), Michael Nyarko (Risk-Based Audit Manager of the Central Bank of Ghana), Hayfron Aboagye (Assurance Partner at PwC Ghana) and to give an HR perspective, Ibukun Janet Ogundipe (Country HR Manager of Maersk Ghana)
The panelists discussed the seven skills and qualities needed to be a successful finance professional where they shared their knowledge and experience on the subject matter.
They identified that there was the need for every finance professional to maintain the balance between the Technical and Ethical Skills with the rest of the six soft skills. They impressed on the audience to take keen interest in digitization in the wake of global trends.
Following this, the Education Manager for ACCA Ghana Kwaku Anim Boadu recapped the Changes to the ACCA qualification and the important dates to note with key emphasis on the introduction of ACCA’s Strategic Business Leader, Strategic Business Reporting and Computer-Based Exams for all its fundermental level papers
Paper Prize Winners and Top Affiliate from June 2017 to June 2018 were all given prizes with short recorded video presentations of the top Affiliates who shared their experiences of the ACCA journey and what these meant to them now.
The presentations of the awards always charged the atmosphere as the audience cheered and applauded the outstanding achievements of the prizewinners.
Two of the panelist Charlotte Forson of Deloitte & Touche and Hayfron Aboagye PwC Ghana were also recognized as they had recently being promoted to the status of Partners in their firms.
She spent a few minutes with the moderator Bernard Tawiah as she inspired the audience with her life story and her ACCA journey
This was certainly the dose of motivation a lot of young folks in the auditorium needed. They cheered her on as she left stage.
With such fire in the hearts of participants, ACCA Ghana ensured students had the chance to engage with these prizewinners to understand what they did right to top Ghana and place really high globally. After the main event, there were breakout sessions which were moderated by these paper prizewinners and Top Affiliates. The breakout sessions were grouped based on the ACCA exam papers which directed a thematic conversation for students.
There was another round of breakout sessions which were based on the New Changes to the qualification. The first group was the SBL group which was moderated by ACCA Ghana’s Lead Partner- DukeWilliams which saw over 150 students participate.
In the foyer of the Summit were 19 exhibitors made of Tuition Providers, Partners and Employers.
The employers – Access Bank, Databank, Deloitte, GT Bank, Jobberman, KPMG, PwC, UHY Voscon, Omni Bank were reviewing CVs and offering career guidance and Internship opportunities to participants.
Tuition Providers present – UPSA, Benchmark Executive Business School, Duke Williams Professional Institute, PSA, E Kofi Annan Professional Institute and Duke Williams Professional Institute provided tuition guidance while promoting their colleges.
British Council’s stand had computers setup for students who had never experienced the Computer-based Exams to do so. Google & Wineloya were partnered to provide Digital Skills while taxi Service-Taxify offered transportation to and out of the event venue for all participants for FREE as part of their support for the Summit.
Source: ACCA
