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The business acumen of his 70-year-old Chitipa based mother is the driving force behind the success story of Anthony Mukumbwa, a seasoned internal auditor and fraud examiner. He has had one major failure in life—university selection—which he later achieved after a second attempt. Since then, the Managing Director of Corporate Governance Centre (CGC), a business school and internal audit practice, has hated failure with a passion and it has served him well. I caught up with him to get his life story.
Who is Anthony Mukumbwa?
I am a second born in a family of 10. I was born at Mpata Village in Karonga—where my father was a teacher—on December 22, 1957. My grandfather migrated to Misuku (Mughona Village) in Chitipa from Tanzania. My father John (78) is retired and my mother Daina (70) is a business woman at Chitipa boma. I am married to Iriss Faustina Mwiba for 16 years now. We are blessed with two boys—Anthony and Mark—and a girl, Asimenye.
Where did you go to school?
I did my primary school in Karonga and Chitipa and then went to St. Patrick’s Seminary in Rumphi. I was selected to Chitipa Secondary School in 1975 where I studied up to Form three before proceeding to Zambia to study the Cambridge School Certificate in 1982. I then came back home having failed to make it to the University in Zambia because of poor grades. From 1983, I got employed by government as a temporal teacher and embarked on private studies for the Malawi School Certificate of Education (MSCE). In 1984, I passed my MSCE and proceeded to Chancellor College where I completed my Bachelors Degree majoring in Economics. Fortunately, I was recruited by Deloitte & Touché before I completed my undergraduate studies.
You are better known as an internal auditor. Was it always your ambition to become an auditor and how did you find yourself in this field?
I never thought I would develop a career in internal auditing. This was by “accident.” It was at Deloitte where I developed interest in auditing. I subsequently worked for Portland Cement Company as Assistant Internal Auditor until 1993 when I moved to Blantyre Print Group where I headed the Internal Audit Department. In January 1996 I moved to Sucoma’s Nchalo Estate as the company’s Chief Internal Auditor. My career as a professional Internal Auditor was consolidated at Sucoma where I was exposed to international training in internal audit. While at Sucoma, I was awarded the Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE) in 1999 and Certified Financial Services Auditor (CFSA) in 2001 and then completed my studies for the Certified Internal Auditor (CIA) in 2003. CFSA and CIA are qualifications administered by the Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA) while the CFE qualification is administered by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE). When Illovo Sugar took over the company I was briefly moved to projects as the Projects Accountant. However, within three months of serving in that position, I was promoted to the position of Company Secretary for Illovo Sugar (Malawi) Limited in January 1999.
You had a rewarding job at Sucoma. Why did you leave it for something else?
Yes, I had to leave a job that gave me and my family all that a working family would dream of. However, I always felt that something was missing in my life – running my own business. I think I inherited the business spirit from my mother who has been in business before I was born and still is at 70. My interest in business dates back to the 1980s while in school in Zambia where I was involved in digging and selling Emerald (a precious stone). After completing my Cambridge studies I did some business errands for my mother who was at the time a cross border trader between Zambia and Malawi.
After my university studies and working for two years, I registered a company called Business Contacts Worldwide which eventually won a contract to furnish Malawi Institute of Management (MIM).My trading business collapsed between 1992 and 1993 because of the liberalisation of the foreign exchange which was followed by a heavy devaluation of the currency. My business had a heavy foreign exchange exposure at the time.
What was your next step?
Some five years after the failure of my trading business, I decided to incorporate Internal Audit Services Bureau Limited while working for Sucoma at Nchalo because my passion for self employment was getting intense. The idea of setting up the internal audit business came because I thought it would be more exciting as I had developed a lot of internal audit skills and interest in the profession at the time. I left the company at the time when I had neither capital nor a house of my own. My only assets were determination and intellectual capital. Having set up the only and first internal audit firm in Malawi, I met another hurdle.
I was told that I could not provide internal audit services to the public because the Public Accountants and Auditors Act did not allow anyone without a practicing certificate to provide internal audit services to the public. After a lot of correspondence with the Public Accountants Board (administrators of the Act), I was eventually allowed to practice by virtue of my internal audit professional qualifications, which is the case internationally. On commencement of my business, I changed the name of the company to Target Consulting Limited and then to Corporate Governance Centre Limited in 2003 to reflect the new internal audit definition. In January 2003, I registered a Training Division called Corporate Governance Training Centre (now Corporate Governance College) and Internal Audit and Fraud Defence Centre.
What do you find as key challenges in running the Centre?
My company has grown to a level where the major challenge is management of people and finances. The company has grown substantially in the last two years. Such growth was financed by bank loans. This, therefore, brings the second challenge—loan management in a shrinking business environment. The third challenge is to convince students to look at internal auditing as a career. I am, however, proud to have contributed to the awareness in Malawi about internal auditing as a distinct profession. This has resulted in over nine people becoming qualified internal auditors within the last two years with over 30 people having sat CIA exams by May 2006.
What is the size of CGC now and where do you see your company being positioned in the future?
CGC now employs 35 people, two of whom are expatriates from Zimbabwe. Half the employees are either university graduates or those holding professional qualifications in internal audit or accounting. The company is now directed by a team of five directors of the board composed of business executives from various organisations. I see CGC as a regional force in the next three to five years, especially our training business model in internal auditing that we developed jointly with the University of Pretoria. This model is the first of its kind not just in Malawi but Africa as a whole.
As a seasoned fraud examiner, do you think that Malawi is winning the war against corruption and related financial crimes? If not, why.
I am proud to have investigated over 1,000 frauds in Malawi during my career one of which involved money laundering of over K1.5 billion. Your question can effectively be answered after conducting a research. However, the recent survey done by KPMG brings doubts to my mind on whether we are winning the fight. You see, fraud and other white collar crimes were deep-rooted and chronic in our society especially in the last decade. To stamp it out requires political will. As I have said many times, I believe we now have this political will. However, as the KPMG report highlighted, major overhauls of management systems in most organisations both private and public need to be done if frauds are to be reduced otherwise political will alone is not enough.
What other business interests do you have apart from CGC?
I also run a honey processing company called Eco Products Limited (EPL) which is based in my home town of Chitipa. The company works with bee-keeping clubs throughout Malawi but predominantly in areas with natural forests. We provide extension services to bee-keepers. We also procure their honey, process and bottle it for the retail market in Malawi. The honey is sold in all PTC shops through out the country under the “Eco Honey” label. Small as it is, EPL is economically empowering rural communities with proceeds from bee-keeping products. I also run two articulated trucks (30 toners) that I use to move sugar for my mother in Chitipa and also help her and my younger brother, Fukumele, in managing the sugar distributorship business.
What is it that you are most happy to be associated with?
Success! I hate failing. When I decide to do something I do it regardless of any “road blocks” on my way. I guess I was born a fighter.
What do you like to do in your free-time?
I sometimes wonder whether I have any free time. I tried some golf but it never worked for me. Of late I spend a lot of my spare time with my family. My wife enjoys sitting next to me during such times.
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