Career Growth with Salifu Bah - Part 3

Ebrima Sawaneh: A recognition of your own contribution. But as a leader, how important it is to recognize people's contribution in addition to what this uh, awards meant for you as far as your career growth is concerned?

Salifu Bah: No, I'm, I'm humbled. Okay. To be recognized by an um, institution that is. Not that I never knew about them before but again what this speaks is in the Gambia we have a lot to do in terms of recognizing what people are doing. I know there are hundreds uh, of people or CFOs that are doing way better than what I'm doing. I just want to bring this to attention because when I went to for this award I realized that this has been existing for the past close to 10 years, but this is the fifth one. And the CFOs that I've been, I've seen that are being awarded or people the likes of Taiwo in Nigeria where once there, you know, who you know very well. We used to work with PwC, you know the CFO of Standard Bank. We were recognized together. You know, the Accountant General of Tanzania. We were recognized together. And this, you know, people are not making noise as well. But I have to recognize this. The, the finance director of Gambia Port Authority as well. Um, we were the one that we are selected in the Gambia. So recognizing people is fundamental for two reasons. For me, that's what I believe is to create an um, avenue for people to understand that there is reward for doing good. But more so to motivate the young ones to understand that ah, your efforts and your work is being noticed. For me that's what it does and it creates a reward system. Um, it's not basically the finance that they give you. People think reward is only finance. But for me when I went onto that podium and was receiving this, what reflected on me is my days at the village where it all started. If I can make it in the stage of Accra, you know where I never dreamed of sitting with people managing billions of balance seed at the time. Now you are there. It says a uh, lot that what a Gambian can do or what that young person can do. So it makes people not to limit themselves. And I think this should be a habit that we should do. We should not wait for, until people die or are uh, passed on and we start saying let's recognize them, let's start embracing what people are doing because it creates a better, a better society. Even you know, the Quran says it, if people do good, recognize what they have done. So we have to be recognizing what, what people are doing. But this was really, for me, it's another defining moment for me. Telling me that people are watching. Whatever you're doing, know that people are watching. So it's either today or tomorrow, but your job will speak for itself. Because I never thought about this happening years ago and I reached out to you, I was even thinking that this is an order scam or anything. It's good that I'll mention it. But when I went there, it surpasses my expectation because of the caliber of people. And I was surprised how people were celebrating this in those countries, you know, and, you know, you know, me being. Me trying to make it a little bit humble. I saw the people coming up with 10 people there, you know, with families and everything. I said to myself, if I knew, I would, um, have actually come with my family and tell some of my friends to come and, you know, enjoy these things, these things with me. And, um, it's beautiful to see that you're being recognized. And I think, yeah, you are right. I was pretty much the youngest because when my name was pronounced and I was looking at the room, as I was moving on the podium, everybody was kind of shook. And I know the sh. Was, what is this young guy?

Ebrima Sawaneh: Are you on behalf of your dad? Am I here on behalf of junior?

Salifu Bah: You know, and I think what it says is it doesn't matter your age, doesn't matter your background. You can do it if you believe in it. My background was never to come. None of my family members were accountants or whatnot, so. And, um, I think as a country, we need to do better in recognizing people. There are a lot of people doing great things. Believe me, I haven't done an iota of what certain people have done in this country. And we need to recognize them. And me is something that I really have to say that we have to work on as a people. The like of literature.

Ebrima Sawaneh: Um, yeah.

Salifu Bah: Still, when I think about Chernobyl, I cry that we've. These are people that you create events.

Ebrima Sawaneh: I know I've never worked in, uh, Deloitte Channel. Used to be our audit partner when I was in Echo Bank. I remember writing even about him in my memoir because I remember him talking to me explaining about cost of capital concept when I was a ACCS student that time. And he took his time are many of them. I remember the late, uh. There's a gentleman called Robinson. Robinson used to be executive secretary for gaa. I remember organizing, uh, through, of course, with the ga, with, uh, Mommy M. Gillian and the others. I think Gillen was the president at that point. In time they organized a training in partnership with the uh, with the acca. That's what helped me on my tax acca. One of the examiners m. The examiners from London to come and teach us advanced I think was, I forget the name of the guy but it was an examiner who would tell us this is how we Mark. It's not like just uh, giving us what he know about it. And this is important. We are not recognizing our people 100,

Salifu Bah: uh, uh, uh, we have a lot. We have the likes of Alpha who are here. It's now that we should recognize them. And um, it's now that we, the young ones should tap from these people, invite them on programs, have them speak. Because all of these people, they want to talk, they want to guide, they want to mentor. Let's create the platform for them, let's, let's recognize them. And um, I think you know, which you are doing in your own way. I don't want to create marketing, but this is why we build the Finance Leadership Forum, um, to create this. But I think recognition is something that we have to do our people. And I think the accountant's role in society is really under some actually because in fact the person who was creating this award, that's what he said. He said there is nowhere that you will go in an institution, organization being public or private that where you don't see the number two in most cases as the accountant or the most important person as the finance professional. But why is it that we write checks for people to go and celebrate a lot of things and we don't want to celebrate ourselves? I say, I told him I think it's because we are used to sitting behind the computers and we are afraid of talking to people. Possibly that's why. Or we are good at saying no to people to some extent. We see even no to ourselves. But there are a lot of people that need to be recognized in this country and I think we have to

Ebrima Sawaneh: do it as a habit and on that. So it's a very key point and I always keeps uh, on talking about it. We tried, we worked together, we founded the Finance Literacy Forum. And I think we are doing our little uh, way of doing it. And I think it's a fact that uh, I can say uh, from outside I think institutions like our own Giga could, could have played a bigger key role in this because it's like they are the mother and father or let's just call parents of accounting body or professional in the country. So whatever challenge uh, they may have uh, that that may be there, but I think even if it's just an uh, email or a WhatsApp message or so should uh, be used to recognize people's effort. Just like you receive your award. I know our sister made us very proud. Also received another award international platform. I know it our own way through the flm. So but uh, let's see on a different conversation we have on this to see how best FLF can take this to another platform. Very well. If we can work with Jiga to do it together, that would be perfect. But uh, otherwise we should find a way of how do we recognize these people. I know if this is Nigeria, you will see press release being sent for you being sent for Gilan on paper just to recognize them so that the young people who are not on maybe on this platform like flf, when they see it on the news, they feel like, oh, Gilan, for example in the case of a female is a female in the finance. She became a CEO. Now she's winning international award. So maybe I too can become a CEO. I uh, was talking to young people like Sini Job, uh, Essay Duba and Fatiha. People like them could see, you know what Ngilan could be even if I don't talk to her, could be an example for me. Um, and similarly you coming from the village, a boy from the village, a boy from Basie will know what, you know what this boy is from the village and today he's a finance director and he's recognized outside beyond the Gambia is a good thing. So that's why I like about recognizing our people when they are ah, doing a great thing both locally and internationally.

Salifu Bah: No, no, agreed. And I think um, it's something that we have to be very intentional as people. I know we try to be humble a lot which we usually have this conversation, but it's not about you sometimes it's about the people around you that you can motivate through this. Nobody wants to see yourself being publicized. But when I look at even Ghana the other day, I think yesterday I was looking at the papers and I because now I follow most some of their papers and I realized that all these awards, the, you know, the finance director of their German. This is like um, a big thing that all the papers are writing in in their own media houses and the Standard bank cfo. And I think what institutions should come and do is to support some of these initiatives. Because what I realized there you have the likes of not to create a marketing but kpmg, um, Ghana, you know you have Standard Bank Ghana coming to embrace some of these platforms. You have a lot of companies that when they are to sponsor some of this, these things. So I think those things need to come. You know, as a country we have to look at it from that perspective and not just to say, oh, we are not into this, um, course, but there are a lot of people that need to be recognized in this context.

Ebrima Sawaneh: We will continue with the uh, flf. I'm glad that uh, you are the current president of flf. So we see before your time, uh, and how best we can uh, uh, get us money.

Salifu Bah: Get us money.

Ebrima Sawaneh: One or two of these. So yeah, great. So I mean we, as you know, we often host many people on this uh, platform. And one of our conversation we had, or guess we had, we chat with three strong, uh, very promising young ladies. Uh, as I gave their name, Sini Job, Fati Charm. And I said they are all working in different, uh, organization in the banking, public sector and uh, other private companies. So we asked them different questions. So I thought I should pick one of them which may be more closer to what you do. And that is ah, CNI jobs. Correction. But one uh, of the conversations we had was the alarming rate at which the number of students studying chartered accountancy is reducing. And I agree because I remember in 2024, no, 2023 when we did one of our FLF, uh meeting, uh, in Gambia, we had invited Baba. Baba Job. Is it Baba Job? I forgot his name from Jika. The. The. Exactly. I mix up with his friend. And he also mentioned the same thing of young people studying to become a chartered accountant is reducing, uh, and this fundamentally affect. Because people may not know in the laws of the country many parts in the world, in the uk, in Nigeria. I know there are some jobs you cannot do. M. You are not a chartered accountant. Whether you have a PhD from whichever school, doesn't matter what you have. If you want a chartered account and you have to be registered with them, you're going to do those jobs under one of those CFO or a finance director of a public company or a listed company. Now let's even put the law aside. If we don't have people who are trained to become chartered accountant, you are also assured that there will be little accounting professionals we could export outside the country. Some of us are here where we are today because first we work hard, but secondly we are also a chartered accountant. So it was easy to benchmark us across with other countries. Whether it's local charter accountancy or international. It doesn't matter. Now what senior was asking, what is it that your organization and yourself, if you're consideration of a program that you are doing to encourage young people to take a part in studying chartered accountancy program, maybe there is something you are doing personally or maybe there is something your organization is doing because people who are dropping from these programs to. They have multiple ah, reasons. But let me hear what, what do you do as a person or what your organization do as an institution to support, uh, more young people to study chartered accountancy.

Salifu Bah: Yeah.

Ebrima Sawaneh: Thank you.

Salifu Bah: Thank you very much. I think, um, maybe researchers now doing masters. I would say there is no empirical evidence to say the numbers are declining, as the academians will tell you. But we know in reality that the numbers are declining because we didn't do a research on that. But the reality is the numbers are declining. Why? Because I work in places where I wanted to recruit accountants in numerous occasions, where usually what you get is people doing maybe the degree programs or who are coming from the academic side. And like you said, in certain professions it's always better to have people that have gone through that professional training. And luckily, kudos to what our institution is doing. The director general and you know, with division with the management team, including the hr. When I went there, I found with my current role that they have an internship program, um, for all the departments from finance, you know, we call it Resource, which is the technical department, hr, IT and everything. What we are saying is we even have deliberate policy around it. Each department, at any point in time, you need to have one staff as an intern to some occasion. Intern, um, how to call it, um, too. So the intention is this, develop people's talent. Because most of these people that are coming from the school, you'll be surprised to know, or it's not even a surprise that, um, what they're being taught at school is completely different than what they're doing at the job. As simple as bank reconciliation. You see people with degrees, if you give them a cast book, bank statement, reconcile, they don't even know where to start, what is what in reality and where to start. As simple as that which is now being automated. Let's put everything aside which is now being automated. But you know, what it does for the young people is to create that opportunity to interact. For me, that is very important to understand how the professional workspace work. This is very, very key. And this is what we are doing. And I think since I started, I found my, my colleague there, Moto budget, doing very well. And um, you know, I pushed that hard. I make sure that at any point in time we have one. And luckily all the people that I have train there usually before they even complete through either my network, which is an order plus, or somebody's network. They have jobs.

Ebrima Sawaneh: Yeah.

Salifu Bah: Full time because they're able to start practicalizing their technical, you know, or their theoretical knowledge. So that's what internship things is doing. Um, and we did something similar at dnpc. We don't hire people direct at the time in finance, but we put them through the internship program. Tell us, get us to know the people that you are working with and so on. And my case was not the same thing. This is what I was offered and I tell people still I went through an internship program and today here I am. And um, I can maybe quote example even our current lawyer was there as an intern. And um, fantastic lady doing, doing so many things. But even in the accounting profession that what we are doing. But beyond that as an individual too, I think that we are doing to help myself and you and Musaswa through the feature CFO program that we are wearing today that we're providing courses that are very practical in the work and the job market. And this is what the professional needs. And this is not only for chartered accountants, but even people that are coming from the academia doing um, the job. But the most important thing is I think there should be deliberate efforts and with the coming of this capital market, it's not going to change that those laws will remain because this is what protect the integrity of an industry or a profession. And we have to acknowledge that not only in the Gambia, because in other countries they have their own local one with us. Unfortunately we are yet to have that. We are on this ACCA and other professionals, we have to jealously guide it to make sure that this bring investors confidence. Because you look at the audit farms, that's the truth. The audit farms, the accountants. Now the profession is dying in this country. So that intention building institutions to do it. Now you don't go to those normal way of saying constructing a physical building to put students there, but I think we should go digital. A lot of students now are uh, doing the ACCA with, with me. I used to do it with Martin Jones in LSBF online. So I think our professionals as well need to be very in intentional join the CFO platform. Courses on ACCA can be created and um, specific topics, financial modeling, financial management, valuations. These are all critical topics that you have in the ACCA program. Taylor made it and I think that's the Part that we are playing in our own quarter. Is it enough? No. Do we need other people to come and join and do it? Yes, because that's where the multiplier effect comes into play. And I think I'm calling on everyone, um, not to just sit and say, I've made it. The most important thing is the people that you have touched their lives. And these are the things that we will be remembered for. It's not the money that we are making. And I think accountants are very good at, oh, let me make the thousands of dollars and sit in my own corner. But our sister professions like the lawyers, you know, even the drivers, they are having this form of organization to see that there is, um, development within their professions and there is sustainability within their profession. Because we cannot fail the next generation of accountants, which means we are failing the country, because anything that is accountable here is accountants. So I, I see this profession as a very noble profession, just like the. Any other profession, like the lawyers. And I think people make deliberate effort around, um. Yeah. Around making sure that.

Ebrima Sawaneh: I'm trying to remember some, uh, part of history, the history of corporate governance. Um, accountants were recognized first. Uh, I may be wrong, but I think accountants were recognized first before the lawyers. So because in the history of corporate governance, people were people who used to. So does not mean there's no law. There was law, but that was more from government point of view. It's like when you say judicial system. Lawyers, we are known for that. But when you come to matters like corporate accountants, we are organized force in the act of the law where you can say you cannot be an accountant until you go to certain training. Therefore such became for. For lawyers. That's what I'm trying to see. Because I know

Salifu Bah: if you look at. Sorry, sorry. But case in point, if you look at. We are among the professions that define that code of ethics.

Ebrima Sawaneh: Yeah.

Salifu Bah: Many profession. Yes.

Ebrima Sawaneh: Very old.

Salifu Bah: So not many professions that you will go and find this. Yes. Now you'll have the lawyers. They already have stuck. My wife, who is a lawyer and was telling me now they ask not to even go and buy breakfast on the street. Just, you know, protect that. That image. And I think as a profession too, we have to jealously guard that. But first we need to build that competence. We need to build that skill, then move into the next, next, next next stage.

Ebrima Sawaneh: And um, I think the issue of practical knowledge is very important. This applies to both the ACCA and that of the university students. A lot of the time, uh, we think, uh, disqualifications give us all the Skills we need, we need to go to the job and get a very good salary.

Salifu Bah: Wow.

Ebrima Sawaneh: Uh, truthfully it's not correct of this place. They don't teach you for example like financial modeling. No, most of them. And um, you don't even hear about what financial modeling is. If you can't do a financial model, how do you prepare a proper budget today in a very good way. You know the principle of budgeting, but you don't know how do you design it and present in a very nice form. You have to learn skill. They don't teach you about career planning.

Salifu Bah: So.

Ebrima Sawaneh: And you lightly said we are developing something around that through the the future C where we have the online training program to get people and uh, I think we started this conversation in 2023, towards middle of 2023. And I still remember vividly when I was In Gambia in 2024, January, we had opportunity to meet with uh, Mbake.

Salifu Bah: I think it's Mbake Kamara M. Yeah, I think, yeah.

Ebrima Sawaneh: At the university utg. Exactly. So we, we have not reached him, but we promised him that we are developing our own solution because we believe in lean startups. So I'm glad that today we have uh, two to three courses that are online there that people can uh, take uh, on. And we had a lot of very good feedback on your program on taxation because it's relevant to Gambia tax. You want to learn it. For example, what you covered there, it's Gambian tax. It's not about the UK tax or Nigeria tax. So somebody in Gambia won't understand taxation can go there. And land tax. The same will be developed in other areas too and more people are going to jump. So I think that is uh, uh, a very important thing as a way of developing skills in a more practical uh, way.

Salifu Bah: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Ebrima Sawaneh: Let's talk about a bit about the feature Ready Finance, uh, leadership. Because we know our profession like any other profession is very dynamic now. Now there is generative AI. Before we just had machine learning, but today we have generative AI, which you even have agentic AI. And all of these uh, will come with all kind of intelligence. They are going to disrupt what we do. Uh, according to World Economic Forum, you could have close to uh, 30 million jobs being impacted by this in another five to six years. And one of the example they give is the secretaries, clerical works, maybe like account clerks. You don't need somebody to come and type in and put the invoice in. You can scan the invoice automatically and book into the accounting system. How do we prepare ourselves for these future changes? What are some of those future, future things you believe will happen that may impact our profession? And how do we prepare ourselves for them?

Salifu Bah: You know, when I think about this AI, artificial intelligence thing, I said who develops it? AI cannot be smarter than the brain. But now it depends on that individual, how you play around the brain, right? So I think reflecting back again, the best AI is the human brain. For me, people will say, yes, there will be jobs that are lost, but there will be jobs that are created. That's the truth. So any um, disruption, the people that um, understands it and challenge themselves become the winners. Just like when Covid came smart way. Johnson and Johnson and all the other people say, oh, let's go and create a vaccine. It was a big business for them. So AI too is for me is the same thing. Now the clerical and the routine tax jobs that we used to do, the accounting, technical accounting, things that we used to understand the valuations and so forth, systems can do those things better because if they are automated, they do it better. And um, seamless and easy. Now how do we use this data? Becomes an order issue. How do we interpret this data? Becomes an order issue. But for you to interpret the data, you have to understand how is this data inputted, how is it generated. For me that is very critical. So let's position ourselves in that zoo to understand exactly what these machines are doing, how they're doing it, what is the output and who our target audience are. Because every day now your target audience are changing or their needs are changing. So you developing your skill set in that becomes very easy. Now you don't need to spend time, for instance to write a letter in certain ways. What I will advise people is go and learn how to make prompts in ChatGPT.

Ebrima Sawaneh: Prompt Engineering.

Salifu Bah: Engineering. That's what you have to learn. And um, for instance, that's what I'm doing now. I can, I can remember I was doing this presentation and you know, within 30 minutes I think my boss said, sal, we have to do a presentation for this. And I just went inside, develop the document quickly, put it up and run it into um. First I run it into Nipkins, which changes words, scripts into graphics and put it into, you know, comma, um, I think I forget the name of that AI again as well because obviously you have to pay. And automatically my PowerPoint presentation was developed. Yeah, gamma. Fantastic. Gamma. So the next thing is now how do you present this information? That's where now the human intellect, that is our AI as the human Being has to come and play its magic. For me that is what is important. Now we have to accountants should not go through that traditional way of learning basic accounting. But now we should be coders, understand how coding is done, understanding, you know, if we want to be competitive. And um, during my this event, the award the person that came from Uganda, he said now they are finance people. They are not recruiting technical people, technical finance professional. They are recruiting engineers as finance professional. And I was telling them now you are see seeing CFOs who traditionally were not have not gone through this uh, you know, traditional finance but because they understand this generative AI, this data analytics and so forth. For me those are the future points that you have to how do we use the data coming from AI? But first we have to go backward and understand each state of this because I believe that the human brain is the most powerful AI. Yes job will be loose, but we have to position ourselves to be able to use this. Not to be, you know, people that lose our job, but rather make ourselves relevant in the system.

Ebrima Sawaneh: Yeah, yeah, I, I, I uh, definitely agree uh with you. AI will come, it will take uh, other jobs, it enhance our productivity, but it will also create other jobs. Now if you are auditor, you know that you are going to be using AI work. So that means how do I audit AI? Yep, you are using a human being who probably is bit uh, uh, lazy if I put it that way or have some limitation. But AI becomes so perfect. Now I saw an example of AI creating an invoice which was a fake invoice said I was in maybe us, I ate the food. An invoice that the person went to a restaurant and eat it is on a stampede. So that means time will come. People can just create any invoice for you and create the stampede and use it on their pedicures and claim out of it. So that means there'll uh, be people who know how to audit those kind of things that be really that's where we start thinking uh, uh differently. There is deep fake where they create voices. A lot of companies have been scammed with that already. Where they will call this, I'm the CEO, I want you to make this payment. People respond because they think it's their CEO. So all of these things make us start looking at what kind of controls we put in place against this uh, technology. So it's important we invest more time into uh, AI uh for us to be able to participate in this uh, trending or the changes. Thank you very much. It's been Great having you here. But before we ask for your uh, closing remarks or conclusion, uh, I wanted to uh, uh, ask, uh, first of all, do you have any question for our next guest? As we often do here, we, uh, don't know who will be our next guest and we will work towards that. But I don't know whether you have any bowling question that you felt we can ask our next guest to uh, to maybe discourse, uh, upon.

Salifu Bah: Possibly I'll do a rhetorical. Possibly it could be you. So maybe I can access.

Ebrima Sawaneh: Yeah.

Salifu Bah: On, on, on top of my head. I, I try to localize things, try to see what our market needs, um, as a country. Because we, to be honest, 500 steps back compared to what is happening in the other, you know, sides of the world, especially in this day of. We've talked about AI, we talk about finance transformation, we talk about digitization. As a country, I don't just look at finance people. How can finance lead or bring these conversations of automation, automation from a business sense, to make sure that this is embraced by, by, by stakeholders. Because why I'm asking this question. I can remember a couple of years ago being a finance staff, when it comes up with, you know, it transactions, you just look at them and you hate and say, look, you're spending so much money not knowing that, you know, this is really creating efficiency. But today we really, we see the realities that is kicking and it's kicking fast. And for us to export knowledge, we need to adapt to that process. So how do we as finance professionals lead this transition, um, of digitization? You know, for me is a question, uh, you know, I don't know how to put it best, but how do we lead this process to bring the business case? Right, yeah, yeah, the business case of this financial transformation. For me it's important because usually when finance stop, most of the people will listen because their biggest scare is money. And when we are talking about transparency and everything, I use government as an example. Um, when you talk about accountability and transparency, we just had a law which is saying access to information. Bill M. Do you think people should be writing papers and come and ask why with digitization can we transition from that? But if finance put in a business case, it might be considered. So how can finance lead that process? I think that would be my, um, conversation or my question for the next, for the next guest. And um, yeah, before closing, I think I would like to. Unless if you're going to give me an opportunity to close. But I think.

Ebrima Sawaneh: Please, please, uh, proceed.

Salifu Bah: Uh, yes, I did not mention a Lot about my family, um, when we were having the conversation, because it was more on the professional. But it's very important to know that you cannot have success without your family. And when, I mean family here, yes, friends, professional colleagues, they are family, but your blood family. And it's important to look at that from your wife, for instance. Myself, I got married at a very young age, maybe at the age of 25. And while I was failing exams, I had a wife who would, you know, tap my back and, um, guide me to those stumbling blocks, through that process. And these things were defining moment. You have your kids that will support you. But beyond that, I tell people this is not finance, but as an individual, you need to be vulnerable if you want to make it for people to know exactly what you're feeling. There were moments that I cry, call my dad, my mom, and cry just to remove it before I, you know. So these people played a very important role in my career. My uncles, my aunties, these are all people that have played a very big role in, in my life. And I think one day I'll have to follow your footstep just to write a book. And, you know, for people to know that this is what people have gone through to achieve what they've achieved. But without family support, believe me, it becomes very difficult for you to make it in life. And we have to be recognizing this effort and the sacrifices that they are doing, especially our spouses, because they go through a lot to see us achieve this. They sacrifice a lot to see us achieve our successes sometimes. And for me, these, uh, are things that I think, um, don't cut it on your, uh, when you are doing your editing. So bring it out for people to know that it's important because some people will be saying, oh, I have to wait to finish before I get married. You can still be married and you know, get the qualification. Yes, just get the right, right, right, right partner. So I thought it wise I will not do justice. I finished this video because, you know, if you have a lawyer, it's always difficult. They're watching your or listening to you. So.

Ebrima Sawaneh: But see, see, see knows. I mean, definitely whether you, you talk here or she knows that, uh, you have ah, uh, uh, back. And I always agree with you. Families, uh, play a very key role because I always say to myself, uh, and I remember when I was talking about, um, our career management course that I have on the future cfo, uh, platform, there was a section about work, life, balance. And I always see, number one is yourself, one is yourself, number two Is your family. And number three is the rest of the people, employers and the rest. Because if yourself is not okay, you are not healthy. You can't do anything. Even the family will be in trouble. So you have to take care of yourself. Work, life plan, exercise, train being the right mental framework. Then when you have those things. But remember then number two is your family. They create a lot of opportunity around you. You are comfortable living to travel like people like us who travel quite a lot because you know there is someone in the house who take care of these kids. You are comfortable to even be on this call because you know there's somebody with the kids somewhere there and who, who you probably will not love the children's more than far.

Salifu Bah: Uh, yeah.

Ebrima Sawaneh: So these are comfort you can always do. Not everybody has that uh, opportunity. So it's important we have a good family and not everybody has that kind of family. We know we are living in absolutely has the opportunity. Not everybody. Some people don't even have a sibling.

Salifu Bah: Absolutely.

Ebrima Sawaneh: I just wish they have a sibling. Some people don't have a brother, some people don't have a sister. Some people have not even got. Haven't seen their parents.

Salifu Bah: Yeah.

Ebrima Sawaneh: When you have it take care of them.

Salifu Bah: Absolutely.

Ebrima Sawaneh: When you, you get sick, uh, when you are bedridden, you can't go. Many times we've seen practically not people in the office will call you after 6 months, after 12 months office even remove you from the payroll. They say this is our policy. But the family does not stop in most cases.

Salifu Bah: Agreed? Yeah.

Ebrima Sawaneh: Ah. So I, I always talk about and I encourage you as we always discuss to write your, your book because I always believe we all have a story and our stories are uh always fascinating uh that young people are going to learn. This is a mistake we again make. In uh, in Africa people don't write their stories after they have gone. We people start imagining who you are. Uh a few pages I wrote which does not even cover half of my story. I think uh, my first readers were my, my, my children. And some of the things my daughter came up to me and said now I understand why you talk about certain topics. So I encourage you to write and I encourage accountants don't write. Somebody was telling me accountants who write. So start surprising please. We have to encourage our accountants to write. This is social media time. There are many stories. By the time you go through your Facebook, you go through your LinkedIn posting, you go through your Instagram, you really remember some of your stories because they are posting it. If you go to those videos Those images you post, you start connecting them together and write a very good sort, uh, memoir. You don't have to be uh, 70 or 80 for you to write something. It's really incredible. And uh, I think um, before we come to the formal closing, I don't know what message you have for our future CFOs. This is a future CFO podcast. So where we are trying to create awareness for young people especially who can be future leaders in finance profession, we. What message do you have for them as your closing remark?

Salifu Bah: Mr. B. Yeah, thank you very much um, Ibrahima, I'm very grateful for, for, for this opportunity. Once again, um, you have to push me to come and do this. And I think maybe I, I don't think I'll regret doing this or I regret doing it. But to the young ones, I will always say it, you can make it. And all it requires is look for the right mentor. Define your purpose and be intentional. Define your purpose and be intentional. Nothing can break you. They can delay you, but they cannot deny you. That's the truth. If you are there, they can only delay you and they can't deny you. So my message is defined it, be intentional, uh, go and take it. This wall moves and you need to get ready for the opportunity. For you to get the opportunity. Not people are lucky but because they were ready for that opportunity. And if you are not ready for that opportunity, you don't get it when it comes, you miss it and start blaming people. So don't be part of those that blames people. And that would be my message for the young professionals. Thank you Mr. M. Ibrahima.

Ebrima Sawaneh: Thank you very much uh, Mr. M. Bar. And um, thank you to our audience and uh listeners. We are talking to Mr. Salih Bah who is the current finance director of Gambia Petroleum. Uh Gambia Petroleum, ah, commission. Uh, Mr. M B is a chartered accountant and uh, he is also one of the co founders of the future cfo, uh Institute, the president of Finance Leadership Forum, a uh, tax expert, uh, in the Gambia, and a uh, young professional who have made his own impact as you've heard his own story, uh, starting from uh, a village and then moving all the way to the city where he had to go through different careers as uh, if you want to call it a starting point of being an office, uh, intern where he's carrying papers from one day to another. But today he's at the height which we can say he has really achieved growth in his career. And this is Saliva's story. I'm sure you have your own story and or you have your own path that you are following up. Listen, uh, to what Saliva has done. You can listen to much more other videos that we have on either our YouTube or on our website that will help you to grow in your career. So until we see you next time,

Salifu Bah: this podcast is brought to you by future cfo.info, your go to platform for practical Finance and CPD courses. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button and share this episode with your network.