The Office of the Auditor General has been appointed to the board of the Global Fund’s Audit and Finance Committee. The new responsibility to the AG’s office will see the focal person for donor activities, Grace Rwakarema, sit on the committee tasked with audit affairs for the eastern and southern Africa region. The office has had a long standing relationship with Global Fund over the years, which sees the AG’s office audit the organisation activities in the country. The new responsibility was confirmed by Auditor General Obadiah Biraro, who said it was testament of the confidence the Fund has in Rwanda and in the office. “We audit all Global Fund activities in the country and we have got an arrangement whereby before midnight on December 31, every year, we send our opinion to Geneva,” Biraro said. “It is a demonstration of the confidence in the Office of the Auditor General and confidence in our capacity.” He added that Rwanda has been a beneficiary of the Global Fund’s activities through which the two parties have gained an understanding of each other’s activities and built professional trust. Biraro, however, said the recognition of the responsibility required investments in recruiting, training and deploying staff of the institution over time. “Over the last 10 years since I joined this institution, my first responsibility as the Deputy Auditor General was to recruit, train and deploy staff,” he said. These, he said, involved building an understanding of professional ethics that guide and bind staff of the agency. The modern world is about corporate governance, to maintain that you require a code of ethics, Biraro noted. Going forward, he said, the office was ready to execute the new responsibility, sharing the country’s professional resilience and patriotic resourcefulness with the Fund and the eastern and southern African countries as well as collaborate with other stakeholders. The Global Fund is an organisation headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, working to accelerate the end of AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria in the world. Founded in 2002, the Fund is a partnership between governments, civil society, the private sector and people affected by the diseases. The Fund raisers and invests nearly $4 billion a year to support programmes run by local experts in countries and communities most in need. This is the second instance that the Auditor General’s office has received international recognition in a month. Last month, the office won the best Performance Audit Report Award in the African Organisation of English Speaking Supreme Audit Institutions region. editorial@newtimes.co.rw
