By Blessed Ndlovu
Africa-Press – Zimbabwe. AS the world rapidly embraces artificial intelligence (AI), governance professionals in Zimbabwe are being encouraged to identify and leverage relevant AI agencies to enhance government processes and private sector operations.
AI has become the new order and its impact has greatly shaped today’s world as all development is now centred on new technologies.
In an interview with NewsDay Business during the Chartered Governance and Accountancy Institute of Zimbabwe Summer School in Bulawayo recently, Tinashe Chimombe, the co-founder of Special Business Solutions, urged accountancy firms to use proper AI to enhance their performance in their operations while guarding against cyberattacks.
“We should employ those artificial intelligence systems so as to improve our work, so that we can automate those repetitive tasks, especially in the government space, whereby we have got so much manual work, so much repetitive work,” he said.
“We can automate those tasks so that we can make our efforts more aligned to strategy rather than do manual works.
“So, it is very important as governance professionals to identify the relevant artificial intelligence agencies which we should employ in the government processes as well as the private sector in Zimbabwe.”
Added Chimombe: “In terms of combating fraud, it is quite easy in terms of detection of fraud. So, AI systems can identify the areas of risk, especially in the public finance space, whereby we can identify that these areas, from an audit perspective and from a risk management perspective, are the risk areas.
“What we need to do is to identify relevant artificial intelligence tools which try to identify fraud before it occurs in real time.”
He said he is working on a new AI tool which he had shared a proposal with some government departments to help curb fraud and illicit financial flows as well as and misappropriation of funds in both public and private sectors.
“When those things happen, notifications are being sent to relevant authorities, so that we can curb fraud before it even occurs, rather than to be reactive,” Chimombe said.
“So, I have proposed a framework to the Minister of Finance. I have submitted my proposal and also I have submitted my proposal to the Office of the President Department of Innovation, whereby I have got an Artificial Intelligence tool, which we can integrate with the public finance management system.
“So, from an internal control point, we detect fraud, we detect issues of (bad) performance, the issues of compliance. So, because the Auditor-General is continuing reporting that there is misallocation, there are unauthorised invoices, there is abuse of funds. But with that artificial intelligence embedded within the system, it will make the system freeze when it detects unusual transactions.”
Chimombe highlighted the importance of AI in today’s world saying it can do everything such as calculating more faster, generate reports, generate ideas and can recruit on behalf of institutions, while attending other problem-solving or decision-making tasks which are strategic, rather than taking time doing all those traditional manual processes.
He underscored the importance of a proper AI framework that can improve governance and its effectiveness in the long term.
“From the perspective of compliance, we know that for compliance to be present, there should be regulated frameworks. We should comply with certain legal statutes,” Chimombe said.
“So, as far as it is concerned, I’m reliably informed that the government is making frantic efforts to come up with some statutory instruments through the Ministry of ICT and coming up with a legal framework in as far as AI is concerned, its implementation, monitoring, security issues, cloud computing, etc.
“That’s very important. So, in Africa, we are not yet there in terms of regulations. In South Africa, they don’t have. Here in Zimbabwe, we don’t have. But only in Europe, that’s where they have an act.”
Chimombe argued that AI will not take replace humans, but acts to complement human activities as people will always remain the overseer of the implementation of new technology.
“And it will need a human oversight to authorise. When it detects an unusual transaction, for example, you want to pay money above US$10 million, that’s an unusual transaction. That’s not a recurrent expenditure,” he said, adding that by embracing AI and leveraging its potential, Zimbabwe can drive innovation, improve governance and foster economic growth.
Effective collaboration between governance professionals, AI agencies and private sector stakeholders is crucial to achieving these goals, Chimombe said.
Source: NewsDay
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