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Fellow Name: Aminah Nyirahirwa

Country: Rwanda

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

Title: Senior Performance Auditor

Email: Aminah.Nyirahirwa@oag.gov.rw

Audit Plan Topic: Private health facilities regulation

Canadian Host Office: Office of the Auditor General of Canada

Grad Quote: “The supportive guidance from my mentors and the opportunity to apply best practices were both empowering and deeply rewarding.”

Gallery (2024):

Two experience images (2024):

Decoration Color: Blue

Profile Headshot:

My Fellowship:

My Canadian placement:

Office of the Auditor General (OAG) of Canada

My Canadian audit team:

I was part of a team auditing the Canada-wide Early Learning Child Care System, led by Principal Gabriel Lombard.

My most valuable learning:

I learned about effective audit planning based on thorough risk assessment. I also learned that effective communication is key for successful audits, including team management and engaging stakeholders at each stage of auditing.

How my Canadian colleagues and mentors helped me:

My Canadian colleagues and mentors provided invaluable guidance, sharing their expertise openhandedly and always encouraging questions and discussions. Through the knowledge and experiences that they shared I was able to comprehend different best practices that can be applied in varying contexts of audit work. Their supportive approach and feedback not only deepened my understanding of audit planning but also boosted my confidence to apply these insights in my own work.

What I enjoyed most:

What I enjoyed most was the mentorship and the collaborative environment within my host office, which fosters teamwork and open communication with Directors and team members and helped with gaining hands-on experience and invaluable insights into best auditing practices. The supportive guidance from my mentors and the opportunity to apply best practices were both empowering and deeply rewarding. Collaborating and interacting with individuals from different cultural and professional backgrounds with different perspectives broadened my own understanding.

My audit plan:

I developed my audit plan with the guidance of my mentor at OAG Canada, Audit Director Ewa Jarzyna.

The connection to my country’s development priorities:

This audit of private health facilities regulation is in line with the social transformation pillar under the Rwanda National Strategy for Transformation, which is to enhance the demographic dividend through ensuring access to quality health for all.

Regulating healthcare services provided by private health facilities promotes equitable access and supports the broader health system in sustainably improving health care services at all levels while contributing to higher quality, safer patient care and more sustainable healthcare infrastructure.

The audit project also aligns with the country’s commitment towards achieving Sustainable Development Goal 3 (Target 3.8), that emphasizes the importance of strengthening health systems to deliver quality, accessible, and equitable healthcare services to achieve universal health coverage. As well, Rwanda’s Fourth Health Sector Strategic Plan aims to contribute to SDG 5, on gender equality, by eliminating gender barriers to providing and receiving essential health services.

How CAAF and my host office helped:

Through their feedback and the challenge sessions, CAAF and my host office played a crucial role in helping me develop and improve the audit objective and scope, audit questions, and focus areas for a strong audit plan that can be implementable. The comprehensive mentoring and targeted training sessions emphasized practical applications of auditing principles. Also, risk assessment and mapping stakeholders helped to identify risk areas for the focus of the audit project. The challenge sessions, which provided real-world scenarios, benchmarks and gender lens application, helped refine the audit plan.

The skills and knowledge I improved by developing this plan:

The process of developing this audit plan helped me to improve my skills in critical thinking and identification of project risks and demonstrated the significance of appropriate documentation in audits. Also, working on audit plan helped me to improve my understanding of SDGs and gender lens application.

My future impact:

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

Continuous engagement, collaboration and communication with key stakeholders throughout the audit phases is a gamechanger in achieving audit success.

Conducting interviews with key stakeholders in the understanding subject matter phase of the audit helps identify risk areas where to hone your audit focus.

Proper and detailed documentation of the audit, with working papers well cross referenced from the start, is essential for gathering knowledge and understanding the subject matter for scoping and focusing the audit towards achieving your goals.

The difference I hope to make:

I hope to conduct performance audits that are SDG-focused and include a gender equality lens or engage in audits that bring out these aspects and consider whether entities include these lenses as part of their organisation’s plans and strategies. This should be assessed and considered at an early stage of audit planning and throughout the course of the audit. With such inclusions, audits will have a greater impact on the country’s development and may even gain international attention.

My professional goals:

Upon my return to my home country, I will complete my audit project. I will also share the knowledge and skills learned with my colleagues through training and by improving and updating templates and working papers used in performance audits. In the long term, conducting performance audits that include a gender lens and the SDGs are certain to contribute to creating the environment for sustainable development.

My Experience Part 1:

The most Canadian thing I did was…

Using maple syrup in place of honey and sugar, kayaking at a cottage and watching a baseball game.

My favourite cultural experience in Canada was…

Visiting the Museum of History and Museum of Nature and seeing the autum transformation of leaves from green to red, orange and yellow.

My Experience Part 2:

My Fellowship experience in one sentence:

The Fellowship was a transformative and mind-opening experience that provides benefits through learning opportunities and a global network that contributes to one’s professional and leadership impact.

My Fellowship in a single word:

Transformative.

Now that I have completed the Fellowship…

I am more confident about leading a team and conducting performance audits and willing to teach and share with others. 

Gender: Female

Aminah holds a Bachelor of Science in clinical medicine and community health and a diploma in project management, and she is currently completing a Master of Public Health in monitoring and evaluation at Mount Kenya University. She has completed the three-module performance audit course offered by the African Organization of English-speaking Supreme Audit Institutions (AFROSAI-E) and holds a diploma in performance auditing.

With over four years of experience in the health sector, she has transitioned from a medical background to performance audit. She is currently a senior performance auditor at the Office of the Auditor General of State Finances of Rwanda, where she has been working since June 2022.

My goals for the Fellowship

Through participation in the Fellowship program, I anticipate acquiring practical experience in executing performance audits and enhancing my proficiency in report writing. Additionally, I aim to learn and implement techniques and methodologies shared from experienced professional auditors, thereby elevating the caliber and impact of performance audit projects I undertake.

The impact I hope to make as a graduate Fellow

Upon completion of the Fellowship, I aspire to disseminate the expertise acquired from my mentors and colleagues, conducting impactful performance audits within my SAI and across the region, particularly through application of the gender lens.