Overview

The Foundational Accounting and Financial Management Skills Enhancement Program (FASE) aims to develop an Accounting Technicians’ qualification in five countries: Morocco, Tunisia, Ivory Coast, Senegal, and Burkina Faso. The project will address the extreme deficit in accounting and financial management skills in the five targeted Francophone African countries by developing a sustainable, basic-level training and certification process for accounting technicians.  

This program will provide knowledge resources and support to enable countries to train and deploy “accounting technicians” for the public and private sectors. “Accounting technicians” are well-trained in basic, practical skills of bookkeeping, controls, cash management, budgeting, and the like, but are not fully qualified chartered or certified accountants. Their training period is much shorter than for fully qualified accountants and is focused on basic and practical skills that are urgently needed in low-capacity countries.

The program is implemented during 2018-2025 by the World Bank with the support of the Ministry of Finance of Austria. The program is managed by Adenike Sherifat Oyeyiola, Practice Manager (EGVPF).

Project features

• The initial training for accounting technicians will be the same for the public and private sector and will mostly involve practical skills that are nearly universal, for emerging and developed markets. Initial trainings will include a focus on assistance to women, youth and, where feasible, other vulnerable populations.  
• The next layer of training will be on two tracks, with separate public and private sector foci. To help demonstrate the quality of the training and skills provided and enhance employability of trainees, a qualifying exam and certification process will be developed.
• Ultimately, the project will equip national PAOs or other training institutions to continue offering training and qualification on a sustainable, fee-for service basis.  However, for the first three-year phase of the project, the goal will be to successfully develop the program and launch it with initial trainings and qualification in select countries, in order to build a record of success to promote.
• The long-term vision of the intervention is to create a framework which would facilitate the roll out of the designed accounting technician training and certification program in the entire Francophone Africa region with support from the Pan African Federation of Accountants (PAFA).