Audit Consultant: Annual Project Audit – SIHA Network

The Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa (SIHA Network) is currently seeking a consultant to carry out a consolidated annual audit. The assignment is part of an exciting five-year project entitled “We Cannot Wait: Towards an inclusive and diverse women’s movement in the Greater Horn of Africa” which is funded under the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs Strengthening Civil Society Power of Women grant instrument.
We Cannot Wait is being implemented in five countries of the Greater Horn of Africa Region, including Uganda, South Sudan, Sudan, Ethiopia and Somalia by a consortium of five southern-led women’s rights organizations; namely the Ethiopian Women Lawyers Association (EWLA), FIDA Uganda, NAGAAD Network, MUSAWAH and led by SIHA Network.
The strategic goal of the We Cannot Wait Project is to empower women in the Greater Horn of Africa to lead and define the political, socio-cultural and economic agenda through a gender lens at all levels. A goal that will be achieved through three key outcomes:

• Women’s rights activists and organizations (WRA/Os) are advocating for policy, law reform, and social norms.
• WRA/Os in GHoA form an inclusive and diverse coalition with shared agendas.
• WRA/Os engage actively and visibly in existing or new political and social platforms to promote their agendas.
  Part of the initiating work in South Sudan, SIHA is looking to identify a lead facilitator with solid expertise and knowledge of South Sudan, strong understanding of the political context and the situation of women and the feminist movement in the region. She or /he must have solid expertise on gender equality, advocacy and women rights approaches applied across the Horn and eastern Africa.

OBJECTIVE
The objective of this audit is for the Auditor to verify that the expenditures claimed by the SIHA in the financial statements for the services covered by the Agreement have occurred (‘reality’), are accurate (‘exact’) and eligible and to submit to the donor a report of factual findings with regard to the agreed-upon procedures performed. Eligibility means that expenditures have been incurred in accordance with the terms and conditions of the Agreement.

SCOPE OF THE WORK AND OBJECTIVE
This exercise will comprise a consolidated audit for the project for the period of 2021. The Auditor should plan the work so that effective audit can be performed. For this purpose he performs the procedures specified the IFAD Guidelines on Project Audits and he uses the evidence obtained from these procedures as the basis for the report of factual findings. The Auditor should document matters which are important in providing evidence to support the report of factual findings, and evidence that the work was carried out in accordance with ISA and these TORs.

METHODOLOGY
The Auditor shall undertake this engagement in accordance with these Terms of Reference and:

• In accordance with the International Standard on Audit (ISA) to perform Agreed-upon Procedures regarding Financial Information as promulgated by the IFAC;
• In compliance with the Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants issued by the IFAC.
• In accordance with International Standards on Auditing and in line with IFAD’s Guidelines for Project Audits. Although ISRS 4400 provides that independence is not a requirement for agreed-upon procedures engagements, the Contracting Authority requires that the auditor also complies with the independence requirements of the Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants.
• In an ISRS 4400 engagement, the auditor does not provide assurance but only reports its audit findings. This protocol describes the areas to be covered. Users of the report must form their own opinions and draw their own conclusions. The auditor must agree the nature,timing and scope of the specific activities with the contracting authority and disclose the findings in its report on them clearly (see ISRS 4400). The auditor’s activities and their scope must be clearly understood. The auditor is not expected to express an opinion on the adequacy and suitability of the activities performed in relation to why they were perform or for any other reason.

Period: The audit exercise shall cover the project period 1st January 2021 to 31st December 2021

DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES Under the overall supervision of the Regional Head of Finance & Administration, the consultant will do the following:

• Reconciliation of the information in the table with the accounting records
• Check that the amounts disclosed in the table for the reporting period in question and the cumulative amounts are consistent with the accounting records.
• Check that the same accounting records were also used to prepare the individual financial reports. If separate accounting records have been kept, the auditor checks that the amounts disclosed agree, in so far as applicable, with the accounting records underlying the consortium partners’ individual financial reports.
• Existence of documents and processes
• Takes note of the lead party’s/consortium partner’s description of the processes and the documents on the basis of which payments to cooperating partners are deemed to have been made and accounted for.
• Checks whether the description includes variations and, if so, states what they are. The auditor will have to specify the variations in its report of factual findings.
• Take note of the amount disclosed in the table as accounted for during the reporting period and ask the lead party/consortium partner for a breakdown of the underlying amounts in the accounting records.
• The auditor selects 10% of the underlying amounts in the accounting records (but at least two and no more than seven).
• If the lead party’s/consortium partner’s description indicates that there is a variation in processes and/or documents, the auditor’s selection must in any event include the two or three most frequent variations.
• If amounts are recorded as accounted for at different moments in the reporting period, the auditor will seek to spread its selection across time.
• If there are several cooperating partners, the auditor will also seek to spread its sample across the cooperating partners and also across reporting periods.
• Subject to the above conditions, the auditor will seek to include at least 25% of the amount accounted for in its selection. If this leads to the selection of more than the maximum number of seven underlying amounts, a lower percentage will suffice.

Regarding each of the amounts selected, the auditor must check:

1. whether there are underlying documents in accordance with the lead party’s/consortium partner’s description;
2. whether they are the outcome of a process (including record keeping) described by the lead party/consortium partner;
3. whether the amounts recognised in the accounting records agree with the amounts in the documents in question.

If the auditor finds discrepancies in the documents, processes or figures, it must state their nature and size in its report.
The auditor must also report the cause of the discrepancy (if known). If the cause is not known, the auditor must ask the consortium partner for an explanation and include it in its report of factual findings. The auditor need not carry out a supplementary review of the cause of the discrepancy or the consortium partner’s explanation.

DELIVERABLES
The schedule for deliverables will be as below:
Deliverables Submission date
Engagement Letter
Draft Audit Report Within 6 weeks from the start date of the exercise
Final Audit Report and Management Letter 1 week after receiving comments from all project partners

FUNCTIONAL COMPETENCIES

• The applicants must have experience working with MOFA audit protocols
• To apply, you must be a Registered Audit Firm that has worked with International NGOs on
  similar assignment and registered with ICPA Uganda.