Accounting and financial management: graduation from the first DESCOGEF laureates

• 22 graduates trained in Burkina

• The first to be trained on site in Burkina

• Skills at the service of national development

Lhe president of the Joseph Ki-Zerbo University in Ouagadougou, Professor Jean-François Kobiané, simply considers them to be “lucky lucky people”. They are the very first winners of the Diploma of Higher Studies in Accounting and Financial Management (DESCOGEF) from the Approved Training Center for Accounting and Financial Expertise in Burkina (CFECF-BF). 1^is July 2023, these graduates, 22 in number, completed their graduation at a solemn ceremony in Ouagadougou.

They are “lucky lucky ones”, because they are the very first to be trained on site in Burkina, in order to be able to qualify for the UEMOA Accounting and Financial Expertise Diploma. In the past, Burkinabè candidates for this diploma, for lack of availability of an approved center in their country, were forced to go to other centers in the sub-region, in particular, Côte d’Ivoire and Senegal, in order to to benefit from the training. And this, with all the difficulties of a social order (abandonment of the family), economic and professional (request for compulsory availability for civil servants)….

Burkinabè’s compulsory use of centers abroad lasted until October 2020, when the first class of CFECF-BF was born, with a DESCOGEF class of 91 students. Thanks to a consortium of four players (the University Institute for Initial and Continuing Education; the Burkinabè Institute of Arts and Crafts, Africa Private Institute of Science and Technology and the National Order of Chartered Accountants and Chartered Accountants of Burkina ) which obtained the authorization to open in 2019, a desire to provide WAEMU member countries with at least one approved center thus materialized in Burkina. Since then, the CFECF-BF has grown and now has two classes during the day and three in the evening, with just over 200 students, according to the Center’s coordinator, Robert Bationo. This number, he adds, makes Burkina’s CFECF the largest of the 12 in the WAEMU region. “A great pride for the country of honest men,” said Saturnin Bationo, project manager at the Ministry of Higher Education and representing the head of this department, Professor Adjima Thiombiano.

The first cohort of DESCOGEF graduates of the CFECF-BF received, according to several testimonies, the rudiments necessary to meet the challenges of the moment in terms of accounting and financial management. The promotion delegate, Zakaria Balima, confirmed this in these terms: “We benefited from quality training with high-level teaching. We are equipped as well in finance, taxation, audit and available to offer our services to companies, government, organizations and individuals”.

The first graduates of the CFECF-BF are leaving their class at a time when Burkina, according to Mr. Saturnin Bationo, lacks chartered accountants. Through the DESCOGEF, which opens the way to public accounting, the void can thus be filled, believes Saturnin Bationo. And to add that this will make it possible to “address the challenges for our countries in terms of financial accounting, auditing and control”. These challenges are “enormous”, noted the Minister of Economy, Aboubakar Nacanabo, sponsor of the promotion, who was represented. To support his point, the head of the Department of the Economy points out that Burkina occupies a not very good rank in the world ranking of poor countries (184^e out of 191), with a slowdown in its economic growth of 2.5% in 2022.

And to invite his godchildren to contribute to the development of the country, with their new skills. As a baptismal name, the promotion of DESCOGEF graduates proudly bears the name of the chartered accountant Soumaïla Ouédraogo. The latter, steeped in 40 good years of experience, will have left an indelible mark on the profession both in Burkina and in the sub-region where he held high positions in institutions, including the BCEAO. “I dare to hope that you will cultivate the values ​​always embodied by him, which are values ​​of probity, self-sacrifice, high sense of responsibility and well-executed service in the field of accounting expertise”, declared Saturnin Bationo to the laureates.

Beranger KABRE

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The history of DESCOGEF in brief

SAccording to the coordinator of CFECF-BF, Robert Bationo, training at DESCOGEF was born out of the concern of the UEMOA Council of Ministers to contribute to the harmonization of the conditions for exercising the accounting profession in the member countries of the Union. . It was instituted by regulation dated November 17, 2000. It is an in-depth training program in the field of accounting, management control, auditing and finance. It is a training offering the possibility to graduates to enroll in the course of accounting expertise, in order to prepare the Diploma of accounting and financial expertise (DECOFI) of UEMOA. Thanks to the LMD reform, the course has undergone a reorganization, through a regulation dated 2020, establishing three levels of diploma which are: DECOGEF (Bac+3 level); DESCOGEF (Bac+5) and DECOFI (Bac+8).o

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