International capacity building
A strong national accountancy profession can play an important role in a country's economic and business development. ICAEW is actively committed to the sustainable development of robust and independent national professions.
Our work helps to foster high quality financial management, reporting and auditing, and we have worked on more than 65 capacity building projects in over 30 countries across Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East.
These capacity building initiatives aim to strengthen the professional organisations we work with, making them sustainable for the long term and able to grow and evolve independently.
Key areas of activity are:
- establishing audit regulatory systems - for monitoring and supervision
- delivering national accountancy qualifications aligned to international benchmarks
- advising on and implementing international standards - IFRSs, ISAs and IPSAS
- improving public sector guidance through education and training offerings;
- strengthening leadership, strategy and governance.
International Development for a Sustainable Future
ICAEW is working internationally to champion the benefits of strong and vibrant national accountancy professions. Working in the public interest, ICAEW is – like the World Bank, ADB and many other donors – committed to supporting national professional accounting bodies in playing a full and active role in improving financial information and transparency.
International Development for a Sustainable Future gives an overview of the work ICAEW does in international capacity building and why we do it.
Strengthening foundations: accountancy capacity building
ICAEW has successfully helped underpin economic growth by delivering projects in four key areas of accountancy capacity building. This publication provides an overview of these important areas of work and how we can help.
Raising professional standards worldwide
ICAEW promotes and encourages the highest standards of practice and professional conduct.
Raising professional standards worldwide (PDF 424KB/20 pages) includes examples of our work with organisations in Europe, Africa and Asia to strengthen professional standards in areas such as:
- audit quality monitoring
- Practice Assurance
- insolvency regulation
- anti-money laundering
- complaints-handling and disciplinary procedures
- outsourced regulation.
Supporting students to undertake national qualifications
We work alongside ICAEW’s charity, ICAEW Foundation to provide bursaries to young people from disadvantaged backgrounds to undertake the new national professional accountancy qualifications that we have developed as part of our projects.
ICAEW Foundation and the International Capacity Building department partner with the local PAOs to administer the bursary funding and we offer blended learning support and tuition.
Case studies
Economic Insights
ICAEW works with Oxford Economics to issue quarterly reports covering Africa, China, the Middle East, South East Asia and the UK, which provide useful insight and timely intelligence for finance professionals and their clients.