Driving competency through a comprehensive framework

The African Professionalisation Initiative (API), in addition to providing professional capacity building support to countries implementing the API, also aims to providing learning resources to countries needing to develop or further enhance public sector accounting and auditing. The learning resources are aimed to be of a high quality, providing comparability to any international programme, but also, catering to the nuances of the challenges of the public sector in Africa. In addition, the content development process also caters for the incorporation of country specific content, where appropriate, allowing for the creation of a relevant and useful learning process. The API Competency Framework has thus far been key in the content development process, covering all matters that form part of the public finance management cycle, and therefore comprehensive in nature. It also differentiates between basic, intermediate and advanced levels of proficiency and it also caters for cross-cutting issues that as Ethics and information and communication technology (ICT).

To ensure that the API remains at the cutting edge of innovative resources for public sector accountants and auditors the API Competency Framework needs to remain dynamic and adaptive. It is therefore for this reason that the API’s Academic Advisory Committee is in the process of revising the current framework. This will ensure that the learning resource are developed with reference to the most up to date thinking and approaches, contributing to enhanced capacity.