As nominations for the 2025 CFO Awards for East Africa stream in, ICPAR director of strategy and sustainability Julian Ingabire, ALN managing partner Daniel Ngumy,and Movit Products CCO Andrew Ssekamwa weigh on a trend that is poised to shape the future of finance, urging CFOs to leverage AI tools to remain competitive.
Opinion on artificial intelligence seems to be sharply divided between skeptics and early adopters. Those who remain uncertain about the potential of AI fall somewhere in between.
Daniel identifies firmly as an early adopter, as he views AI as essential for the future. He warns that finance executives who are slow to integrate the technology into their reporting and strategic planning could miss the boat.
“I was at a conference just the other day with all the lawyers in my firm, and at that conference, there were two panels discussing issues. I used the AI tool on my phone called Wave to effectively record the entire panel discussion, at the end of which it produced for me almost immediately the minutes of the conversation together with bullets of action points and what needed to be done,” he says.
“Now, if that had been a client meeting, my sheer ability to send my client a summary of all the issues that we had discussed together with key action points would be something that would not only be impressive for my client, but which would help reduce the number of hours that one would have used before,” he adds.
For Daniel, AI is an enabler. Although many tools exist currently, he foresees three to four major advanced products emerging as the most popular in the coming years. Currently, generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, and Midjourney lead the pack.
“None of us really knows the future, but from where I sit, I think someone who is willing to explore and experiment using AI and understand how he can tap it into his organisation will be a much stronger CFO in years to come than someone who decides that it is not helpful and decides to neglect it,” he explains.
“A CFO can become a much better communicator if they use an AI tool to draft emails. Because part of their role is presenting documents to the board. So it could very well be the case that some of that correspondence and communication can actually be very refined for purposes of speaking to that category of people,” he adds.
Inevitable reality
In the same vein, Julian believes AI is an inevitable reality. She proposes continuous learning and adaptation to leverage the opportunities it presents. The seasoned strategist cautions against complacency, advising CFOs to use resources at their disposal to enhance their knowledge.
“Being proactive, first of all, for any trend, whether it's technology or any other thing, is very, very important because as a CFO, you are most likely next in line for CEO. It's very important to leverage the latest tools. If they don't use it, they're left behind. Technology can help you do your analyses, forecast, and plan. It's important that as we upskill in our areas of expertise, we continuously learn and adapt to the different trends and also build relationships that will help us to upskill,” she notes.
In Andrew’s view, AI represents an opportunity to dispense with routine and mundane tasks and concentrate on adding value to insights generated by the technology. He predicts that organisations which do not integrate with AI will struggle to remain competitive, while those that adopt it become more nimble and agile in their decision-making.
“Artificial intelligence has come in not only to make certain routine tasks simpler, but also to define trends and think of how certain tasks or businesses would evolve or how they would trend based on market practices. And I think what businesses have done first is gather data, then take this through machine learning, which will then develop trends, which AI would then use to think ahead for the business,” he explains.
Responsible use
Andrew also believes that early adopter organisations will have a competitive edge, as AI will be used to predict trends in business performance.
“Previously, you would have the financial planning and analysis team do some of these models and projections for you, but AI is now doing it. You could also look at routine tasks in finance operations, things around reconciliation, things around posting journals, and things around math enclosure. So, you have artificial intelligence making this simpler for you,” he says.
While AI continues to gain prominence, concerns about data privacy, consent, bias, and ethics remain.
“There are two types of ways to look at it. At ALN, we developed rules and regulations around what we call acceptable or responsible use of AI. So what I foresee is an increased sense of that direction when it comes to the use of AI. Organisations will begin coming up with rules of guiding what you can or cannot do. I know audit firms have the same issues, and accounting firms will have the same concerns. And even CFOs in organisations, there's a lot of private data that belongs to the company itself. So they might begin creating AI tools that are used for their organisations. And therefore, the data they use is not data for public use,” Daniel says.
