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Fellow Name: Florence Abaganwa

Country: Rwanda

Fellow’s home audit office: Office of the Auditor General of State Finances of Rwanda

Title: Senior Principal Auditor

Canadian Host Office: Office of the Auditor General of Alberta

Decoration Color: Blue

Profile Headshot:

My Fellowship:

My Canadian placement:

Office of the Auditor General (OAG) of British Columbiaa

My Canadian audit team:

I was part of a team auditing the Youth Employment and Skills Strategy, led by Principal Gabriel Lombardi.

My most valuable learning:

Engagement skills. This includes both engaging auditees and engaging team members. Engagement skills, in my perspective, are key to the success of an audit project.

How my Canadian colleagues and mentors helped me:

They are really professional, and they helped me to learn how to conduct a performance audit in practice. My mentor gave me useful instruction and comments on my personal audit project. I really appreciated their time and their patience.

What I enjoyed most:

Equality everywhere.

No barriers when communicating with each other, all words were always respected, all questions were answered.

My audit plan:

I developed my audit plan project with the guidance of my mentor, Principal Kimberley Leach of OAG Canada.

The connection to my country’s development priorities:

My audit project will look at agricultural vocational training for rural labourers in Binh Phuoc Province.

Training for rural workers in agriculture helps vulnerable groups, such as poor households, ethnic minorities, and those with disabilities, to get jobs and increase their income, and boosts the local economy in new, green and modern agriculture.

This audit is most related to Vietnam’s target 4.4, under Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4, to “substantially increase the number of youth and adults who have relevant skills, including technical and vocational skills, for employment, decent jobs and entrepreneurship”, and target 5.7, under SDG 5, to “ensure that all women, particularly poor women in rural areas and women from ethnic minority groups, have equal rights to economic resources and equal rights to use land and own other forms of property, inheritance, financial services and natural resources as provided for by national law”.

How CAAF and my host office helped:

The courses provided new knowledge of performance audit, and my mentor’s instruction helped me apply the knowledge to my audit plan. Furthermore, my audit plan was better after I participated in challenge sessions because they helped me realize some important things to add.

The skills and knowledge I improved by developing this plan:

I learned how to scope an audit effectively and how to develop an audit logic matrix. In the future, this will help me to avoid unexpected issues when conducting an audit.

My future impact:

The new knowledge I’m most excited to share with my colleagues:

I’ll be happy to share all I learned, but especially mainstreaming of gender equality in audits. This will be a new lens at my office.

The difference I hope to make:

Performance audits always focus on value added. Consideration of gender equality and SDGs lenses in auditing will have a great impact on implementing commitments to citizens and international goals.

In the long term, audits that include gender issues and the SDGs are certain to contribute to improving our Administration’s performance and creating the conditions for harmonious and sustainable development.

My professional goals:

I hope to build a professional team in performance audit in my office, supporting more auditors to come together to deepen their insights and knowledge of performance audit.

My Experience Part 1:

The most Canadian thing I did was…

Skiing, watching a hockey game, and having Tim Hortons coffee.

My favourite cultural experience in Canada was…

Fun activities at cultural festivals and events.

Something few Canadians know about my country is…

Vietnamese street food is really delicious and cheap. You can spend $1 CAD and be full and happy.

 

My Experience Part 2:

My Fellowship experience in one sentence:

My Fellowship experience is an important milestone for my professional career and also for my life.

My Fellowship in a single word:

Meaningful.

Now that I have completed the Fellowship…

I’m happy to share how valuable Fellowship is.

Two experience images (2022-2023):

Gender: Female

Florence joined the Office of the Auditor General (OAG) of States Finances of Rwanda in November 2010 as a financial and compliance auditor. In 2012, she joined the Performance Audit Department and today she is a Senior Principal Auditor leading a team focusing on performance audit assignments. She is involved in performance audits in different sectors and projects financed by different partners, training of new performance auditors, and review of work done by the team members. She also participated in planning and developing the OAG’s Stakeholder Engagement Strategy for 2018-2024.

Florence holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration, accounting option, from the University of Rwanda and is currently a student in the advanced level of the program for Certified Public Accountants–Kenya. She has completed the three-module performance audit course offered by the African Organizations of English-speaking Supreme Audit Institutions (AFROSAI-E) and participated in several training sessions on performance auditing and stakeholder engagement offered by CAAF, AFROSAI-E and INTOSAI.

My goals for the Fellowship

I hope to acquire skills and abilities from mentors that will allow me to effectively plan and execute audits that will contribute to the wellbeing of citizens, improve on leadership skills and gain expertise to incorporate a gender lens in audit assignments.

The impact I hope to make as a graduate Fellow

As a graduate Fellow, I plan to share my acquired skills with my colleagues and stakeholders at both the national and international level.