Angella Makowe Mutonhora, 35
After completing her tertiary education in Zimbabwe, Angella relocated to South Africa in 2009 to pursue her dream of qualifying as a chartered accountant. This was not a seamless process, as she spent two years working as a waitress and part-time lecturer to raise funds for her CTA and attempting to secure a training contract.
In 2011 she secured such a contract with BDO and after her articles, she moved to a national role as an audit technical facilitator. In 2016 she launched her Africa Project which saw her expand her technical expertise into BDO offices in East and West Africa and formalise and standardise BDO’s framework across those regions.
She moved to Wconsulting as an audit technical consultant to audit firms and introduced a shared service IT audit role to mid-tier firms that did not necessarily have the technical expertise. This created efficiencies and audit compliance for firms and in the first year, revenue from this service line increased by over R1,5 million.
She is currently the technical director at Crowe SA in charge of all things technical at national level.
Having grown up with a mother who is a teacher, Angella has a passion for education and learning. This partially prompted her to launch a nursery school in Blairgowrie called Busy Bees that also runs a special programme for domestic workers in the area. The programme involves subsidising their children’s fees allowing them access to a quality education, which Angella believes is a right for all children. Busy Bees is also designed to allow children with autism to attend classes and receive more blended learning whilst creating awareness. This allows autistic children to adapt to primary school foundation courses by helping them develop their social skills.
In her travels into Africa, as well as coming from Zimbabwe, Angella noted numerous forms of malnutrition across the continent, and particularly in Zimbabwe. This spurred her on to try and develop a solution for the problem and co-found Nutralife Africa with her sister, a registered pharmacist. This is a moringa project in Zimbabwe to grow moringa (a natural super plant with significant nutritional qualities) for export while utilising women as the majority of farmworkers. This allows women to gain skills as farm labourers and have their own subsistence plots, as well as utilise moringa in their daily diets. Nutrilife farmland has been audited and awarded organic status. To date, the founders have been bootstrapping and have invested over R500 000 into preparing 40 hectares of land. They foresee the first harvest in 2021.
Angella’s philosophy is continuous acceptance of things you cannot change and relentless optimism. In the six years from completing her articles, she managed to be recognised in the assurance field as a force to be reckoned with. She sat on the ISACA SA board from 2016 to 2018 and her presentation at the 2016 ISACA conference was considered one of the top five. She is the only enterprise risk management facilitator in South Africa recognised by the Institute of Risk Management in London and sits on various SAICA committees, including the Legal and Compliance Committee.
Angella has achieved all of this while being a mother of three beautiful girls and being an avid gardener and furniture restorer in her spare time.
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