The School of Finance and Banking (SFB), has added an Accounting Professional course, Certified Public Accountants (CPA) to  its curriculum and it will be taken concurrently with the BBA programme.

The Programme, which will be overseen by the Kenya Accountants and Secretaries Examination Board (KASNEB), aims at adding value to the BBA graduates.

Speaking to The New Times, the Vice Rector for Academic affairs, Papias Musafiri Malimba said that after completing the internationally recognized CPA, the graduates will be in a better position to compete on the labour market.

"We have been training accountants at this institution as one of our BBA programme majors, but they still needed to study other professional courses before being accepted as professional accountants,” Malimba said.

He added that graduates who will undergo the programme will be given additional certificates on top of their BBA degrees.

SFB will provide tutorial services while KASNEB will examine and award certificates to the students.

KASNEB is an internationally recognized examining body especially in areas of accountancy with over 30 training centres across the world and 40 years of experience.

The CPA examination is conducted twice a year, in June and December. The examination is divided into three parts of two sections, with each section consisting of three papers.

The CPA examination is benchmarked on the international standards promulgated by International Accounting Education Standards Board (IAESB), International Accounting Standards Board (IASB), International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board (IAASB) and the International Public Sector Accounting Standards Board (IPSASB).

Malimba said that the school is targeting to begin examining its students in the December intake.

As a pilot project, the school has selected 50 best performing students from the departments of Accounting and Finance to be fully sponsored in the programme. The facilitation includes registration and Examination fee. However, Malimba said that all the other students can join the programme and sponsor themselves.

Other people who are not necessarily SFB students can also offer the programme through SFB, according to the Vice Rector.

The initiative is expected to increase the number of certified accountants in the country, which currently stands at 130, 80 percent of whom are non Rwandans.

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