KAMPALA – Ms. Susan Lamunu Shereni – Head of the Finance and Administration Department at Infectious Diseases Institute is the overall winner of the Chief Finance Officer – CFO of the Year 2022. She is also the winner of the Sustainability Award.
This was during the 6th edition of the CFO awards held at Kampala Serena Hotel on Thursday evening. The awards were based on the judges and required quality nominations.
Organised by the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants – ACCA Uganda in partnership with Deloitte Uganda, the Awards intends at recognizing the role played by CFOs in transforming businesses.
“I’m so excited, I’ve been a CFO for years and this is so amazing. I wish to inspire young aspiring CFOs to keep in their best short, anything is possible.”
“This takes resilience, diligence, teamwork and commitment,” said Shereni.
Shereni has over 10 years’ of experience in project management, Finance and accounting in not-for-profit organizations. In this role, she is responsible for the organization’s continuous Enterprise Resource Planning system improvement, systems of internal control, human resource management, procurement, financial reporting and budgeting.
From her first hands-on experience working with local and international partners, Shereni recognizes and appreciates the complexities around managing financial resources from local and international partners and strives to achieve organizational objectives in an effective, efficient and transparent way.
She is a certified Accountant, a fellow of the Association of Chartered Certified Accounts UK and holds a master degree in business administration with specialism in strategic planning from Herriot Watt University.
“We resolved to award excellence thus the idea of CFO awards was mooted. We’ve witnessed a global transformation in many ways, digital, economic, environmental and many more. Through the years, our agenda has been both insightful and futuristic for the role financial professionals play in transformation. Now the next journey is to make sure that the quality of nominees is enhanced and over and above we have embarked on a journey of knowledge transfer through CFO forums. We also embarked on a journey of having CFO masterclass to assist the CFOs of the future,” said Mr. Norbert Kagoro – Country Managing Partner at Deloitte.
Ms. Charlotte Kukunda – Country manager – ACCA Uganda says the awards develop participants’ leadership roles, revealing that 60% of previous winners have been promoted or moved to senior roles elsewhere.
She noted that they launched the CFO awards for the African continent, although no Ugandan won.
“While we didn’t get Uganda’s best professional winning, we had a finalist and we also had a Ugandan whom we exported to one of the neighboring countries who won the financial services category.”
This year, they received 164 nominations which was slightly less than the previous two years.
“Observations show that there was an improvement in the functional categories, finance transformation and strategy execution. Sustainability is coming up but not yet there and as usual, we had a very good turn up for the young CFO which continues to attract great participation. The public sector has also improved. Female CFOs participated better this year in terms of nominations,” she said.
Other winners are;
CFO of the Year Runners Up – Julius Katanaka – Head Finance – Wazalendo SACCO
He is a two Africa Chief Finance Officer (CFO) award finalist for Financial services award, Small Medium enterprises award 2022, a winner of the Uganda Chief Finance Officer (CFO) award; Sustainability award winner 2021 and Financial reporting (FiRe) awards winner 2021, a result-oriented professional with several years of public/private sector experience in Finance and auditing and risk management. Julius holds Master of Science in Professional Accountancy from the University of London.
Young CFO and Strategy Awards – Andrew Ssekamwa – CFO at I&M Bank
Andrew, who also bagged two awards is an experienced Chief Financial Officer with a demonstrated history of Budgeting, risk management and compliance across a variety of industries including financial services, manufacturing, hospitality, FMCG and retail. He holds a Master of Business Administration from the University of London and Makerere University’s Bachelor of Statistics, Development Economics and International Development.
Public Sector Award – Richard Byarugaba – Executive Director Finance – Bank of Uganda – BOU
Byarugaba has worked with the Bank of Uganda since 1992 after his Bachelor’s degree. He has a Master in Finance for Development Degree in 1998. He is a Fellow of the prestigious Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) in the UK and is a member of the Institute of Certified Public Accountants (ICPAU)
Financing Transformation Award – Moses Amani – CFO at Hima Cement
