• Other

Nangula keeps striving

Gabby Tjiroze

Nangula is the country senior partner of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Namibia and has extensive experience in auditing.

She has served as a partner on audits at various financial services institutions, state-owned enterprises, as well as energy and other utilities and donor-funded organisations.

Last week she celebrated receiving her Master of Business Leadership degree at the University of South Africa (Unisa).

She attained a 77% average and was handed the best student award at Unisa.

“It feels good to graduate, to finish something that I started. I felt I like something was missing in my life and I needed to get to the next level and needed to grow. So this has been quite an achievement for me and now with my experience I can add more knowledge to the industry,” she says.

According to Nangula, getting her masters was no walk in the park as she has been away from school and it felt like it wasn’t something doable, at first.

“The first year was a challenge because I had to find time, as I did not have enough time on my hands. The first few months I started work early in the morning and then early evenings I would spent time with my family and after that I would find time to read up on my schoolwork and it required a lot of reading, so I had to put a lot of effort.”

Work experience

Nangula has over 18 years’ experience in her profession.

From 2006 to 2008, Nangula was the first black and first female president of the Council of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Namibia (ICAN) and has also served on various sub-committees of the institute since 2002.

From 2004 to 2010 she served as a member of the Public Accountants and Auditors Board (PAAB) and has been patron of the University of Namibia (Unam) Accounting Society from 2003 until present.

Nangula served as a member of the Tax Appeal Court for over five years. She was appointed as a member of the first Public Office-Bearers’ Remuneration and Benefits Committee from 2006 to 2009.

In 2010 she represented ICAN on the board of the National Qualifications Authority (NQA). Until June 2015, she represented the PwC Namibia at PwC South Africa governance board meetings, which she attended by invitation.

She hopes to stimulate progress with her newly acquired knowledge and urges her fellows to keep striving and looking for new opportunities.

“The first thing for me is to challenge myself and others at PwC; to see how we are progressing. And that is the first question: How do we stimulate progress? I have been reading a book which talks about stimulating progress. We cannot sit at PwC and say that we have arrived and do what we have always done; we need to keep growing and implement change and then we will have a positive outcome,” she explained.

Academic background

She is a highly awarded academic. She completed her Bachelor of Commerce at Unam in 1997 and started her articles as part of her training contract with PwC and qualified as a chartered accountant. She then enrolled for a part-time honours degree in Theory of Accountancy at Unisa. She passed the final qualifying examination as set by the PAAB.

She further explained her reason for choosing her thesis titled ‘Constraints to implementing public-private partnership in Namibia’.

"There are certain skills in the private and public sectors, which are very essential for the economic development of Namibia. If we want to develop and grow this economy it can only happen if both parties come together. I have built relationships with both sectors. I act as an auditor and accountant for both. They both have good motives and they both want to do what’s good for Namibia and for some reason I believe there’s an element of mistrust or misunderstanding that is just prohibiting the two from working together, so I wanted to figure out the challenges,” she explained.

Team work

Nangula also mentioned the importance of working as a team.

“Teamwork is what helped me achieve this degree. My peers made an extensive contribution, which helped me achieve this masters, and if it wasn’t for them I also couldn’t have made it. All of us were doing the same course and they were a bit younger than me, but it was a good team of professionals and all they contributed, because we worked as a group. We had great team connection and we did not struggle much to find each other. One of the important aspects of leadership is influence and managing teams, so I think we found each other; we cooperated very well in meeting deadlines for assignments and formed our own group. We became closer than just group members,” Nangula said.

Young people

She prays for the day when young people will want to consider a career in auditing and not only in accounting.

“The profession is becoming one that young people do not aspire to. They want to become chartered accountants but not necessarily auditors. So how do we stimulate progress so that the profession of being an auditor is still attractive to young people? We need to think of ways to make auditing an attractive profession for young people.”

Fact box:

- Business Woman of the Year in Namibia in 2011

- Presenter on Attitude of a Leader at the African Leadership Institute

- Patron of the Unam Accounting Society

- Attended Haggai Training Institute in Maui in October 2007

- Was a member of Tax Appeal Court for five years

- Was member of Public Office-Bearers Remuneration and Benefits Committee for three years

- Was president of the council of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Namibia

- Alumni of the BMW Foundation Young European Africa Leaders Forum

- Served on the PwC South Market Area Governing Board from 2009 to 2015