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Meet Samantha Musoke:INPAS Adoption and Engagement Director
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What if non-profits could spend less time on paperwork and more time creating impact?
In our Friday series, we explore all things International Non-Profit Accounting Standard—INPAS—breaking down how it’s set to transform financial reporting across the sector, simplify complex donor requirements, and ease the burden on organisations.
Welcome to Meet the CEO. Today’s guest is none other than Samantha Musoke, INPAS Adoption and Engagement Director.
For more information on this, visit www.inprf.org
What if nonprofits could spend less time on paperwork and more time creating impact? In a Meet the CEO series, we explore all things international nonprofit accounting standard in past, breaking down how it's set to transform financial reporting across the sector, simplify complex donor requirements, and ease the burden on organizations. Welcome to Meet the CEO. Today's guest is none other than Samantha Moussoke, in-past adoption and engagement director. From over 2,300 cities in 178 countries, we bring you the Good Morning Africa podcast. Good morning, Africa. Welcome aboard your everything business in Africa. I am Ritha Dong. For more follow-ups on Twitter at the K Financial News, and you can find me at Rither Dong.
SPEAKER_00So um Samantha Moussoke, I'm English, but I've lived in Uganda for 25 years, and that's how I get my nice Ugandan name. I am currently the INPAS Adoption and Engagement Director for an organization called the International Nonprofit Reporting Foundation. Sorry, quite a few acronyms and names there.
SPEAKER_02No, it works. So help explain uh INPAS. How long has it been in the works? Why is it important that we have it now? And what are the founding tenets that brought it to pass? Why did you know people sit and say in pass has to pass, it has to come to life now?
SPEAKER_00Okay, so uh first question was what is it? So it's uh an international accounting standard that guides nonprofit organizations how to prepare their year-end annual audited accounts. Um why now? Well, I think the better question is why not 20 years ago? Like there's been an accounting standard for companies, there's been an accounting standard for governments, and there has just never been an international standard for non-profits, but the need has always been there. The why not before is just because there hasn't been a body in charge of doing it. There's been no global body that's had oversight of the third sector. It's like this thing that's always left behind. Um, so the need has been there. Um, I guess the why now is how did it come to pass is really because of stakeholders coming together. Uh the one of the main things that happened was the uh chair of the government standards board, that's Ipsasby, the chair of that board, was also interested in nonprofits, and he was able to gather the international standard setting community around this, and we were able, as Humentum, we were able to bring the non-profit community, both donors, INGOs, and local organizations, and build a community to sort of make the case. Then we got funding for it and we were able to proceed. So it's the yeah, it's always been needed, but we've managed to get it to a point where we finally got a document and we published in October.
SPEAKER_02Okay, so usually in the NGO world, you hear that you know USA has its own standard, the um JIS, Jamal will have their own standard, everyone has their own standard. Does this ensure that everyone is reporting uh using the SEM template? And does this template meet the standards of all the different founders? Because look, they're many.
SPEAKER_00They're many. Absolutely, and that's been one of the big headaches. Now, uh normally accounting standards like the ones for the public sector and for companies are for entity-level financial reports, and that's what INPAS is. So that doesn't impact so much with donors, other than the fact that when they get their uh when they're receiving your auditive accounts, they can make sense of them and it's better for due diligence. But the crucial thing that INPAS adds, which most other financial reporting standards don't, is something called practice guide one, harmonized grant reporting. And what we've done here is um work with a number of major donors looking at, as you said, USAID, GIZ, they're all different, but they're somehow also very similar. And worked with a working group over two years to come up with a set of expenditure headings that really meets the needs of the vast majority of donors. And I don't want to go into too much details, but the one of the big sort of reasons it took two years rather than two minutes was how do you get the level of um rigidity and standardization and harmonization that makes it easier for NPOs, and yet how do you get the flexibility that enables any donor to make sure that they can get the information they want? Um, the rigidity is around a certain the financial period, the um currency, the uh accounting policies and the headings, those are rigid, but then within that you can have also other columns for the donor budget and the donor currency and different periods and different funding sources. You can have notes so that a specific donor can request extra information. So that way we've worked really hard to try and find that middle ground that we get the harmonization that reduces the burden for nonprofits, but we get the flexibility that donors, it's not so easy for a donor to say that can't possibly work for us, and they can they can adopt it for their own grant reporting.
SPEAKER_02I know one of the big questions that the NGOs will ask is the financial impact of us adopting this thing. You know, how does it how how do we benefit from it?
SPEAKER_01What's what's in it for us?
SPEAKER_00Sure. Well, okay, so let me talk about the two parts separately. So INPAS itself is built on an existing standard that many NGOs use called IFRS for SMEs. What INPAS does is it closes the gap where IFRS for SMEs is silent on NPO issues, it fills that gap. So it depends on where an organization is at in their financial reporting, but if they're already quite compliant with IFRS for SMEs, the journey to IMPAS needn't be that big. On the grant reporting side, the first time a donor comes in and says, please use the, I'll call it PG1, the practice guide one format, the first time a donor does that, it's no different from a donor coming in with their own new format. But then when your second donor comes in and says use the same format, and your third donor comes in and says use the same format, all the work that you can do to set up your standardized grant reporting is repeatable. So it's a one-time effort to you know map your expenditure coding and um automate your grant reporting processes, one-time effort for long-term multiple donor overtime benefit.
SPEAKER_01So that's the cost of maybe Fission C and the cost of uh bringing the multiple people, multiple reporting, you know, dwindling down as well.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. So over time it should, it should be it the the big uh well the intention certainly and the the objective all the way throughout has been to reduce the burden on nonprofits, not to increase it. Um, to reduce the burden of multiple due diligence uh questions that can actually be answered in a single set of financial statements to reduce the need for a different format report for every donor. Over time, the harmonization that IMPAS brings will reduce that burden. Within the short term, when you're actually adopting it for the first time, there's a one-time, you know, yeah, aligning your systems, looking at your coding, you know, maybe it's capitalizing assets when you haven't done so, or recognising donations in kind if you haven't done so before. So there'll be a first-time adoption hurdle, which should hopefully help. There should be a lot of help at national level to help organizations over that because we're very aware, of course, that MPOs are often resource constrained and have you know finance officers doing a fantastic job who've learnt on the job, who aren't necessarily you know chartered, certified accountants. And we're we've built INPAS to be realistic in that world. We're not sort of naive about the resource constraints in NPOs. That's also why when um earlier in the session, ISPAU, when um Charles Lutimba was talking about the adoption um within Uganda, first voluntary, then mandatory, but for larger organizations say. So that by the time the smaller organizations come along, it's like a road that's been well worn. The auditors know what they're doing, there's accounting systems that can help do it, there's training provisions. Yeah, by the time a small, um, less well-resourced organization has is required to use it, it should be a much easier journey. There'll be a lot of tools out there and support. So that's yeah, hopefully not to be too scared by the adoption hurdles.
SPEAKER_01What does the adoption look like in other countries or other continents? What's the journey like so far?
SPEAKER_00Well, we only published in October 2025, and the adoption of accounting standards takes years. Like our goal is for 10 countries to adopt it by 2030. And that sounds like really measly, but I'm told by those that know about these things that is a very audacious goal. That said, the day after we published, after the 20th of August, on the 21st, Kenya, ISPAC, the Kenyan Institute, made an announcement that Kenya would be adopting. We're just waiting for them to publish their roadmap. Um, Ethiopia are going to be making an announcement very soon. They're in the final stages of approving their roadmap. Um, other countries I can't say so much about, but trust that there's there's good six or seven months of groundwork that happens before any official announcement. And there's a number of countries that we're working with on that sort of behind-the-scenes work. The other thing I could say is that in Latin America we are we're translating the standard into Spanish at the moment, and um I've been invited to speak at the group of Latin American standard setters. There's no African equivalent, but the Latin America work very much sort of as a as a continent when it comes to accounting. And I'm presenting at their annual conference in June, and I'm hearing some very positive noises from across uh across the sea in Latin America. Um, and then the Asia is the other sort of region where we're where there's a number of countries with very active NGO spaces but don't have their own national guidance. So I'm really positive that we will see it will happen. I'm very, very confident of that. It just will take it will take time.
SPEAKER_02Okay, so I'll come back to this conversation in six months and see if there has been any changes, any improvements, and but are you excited for for for for where where this uh the conversation is going in in terms of the conversation that you've just had in the hall? Are you seeing positive uptake or positive um understanding of of of the of inpasse?
SPEAKER_00Absolutely, and from a so what's really nice is that often these different stakeholders, so non-profits, regulators, auditors, and donors, are often seeing as sort of acting as at cross purposes, getting in each other's way sometimes on the financial reporting. And they just, you know, everybody really wants to get on with doing the work. Doing this social justice social mission work that is so vital for our communities. And when the financial reporting landscape is so fragmented and complex and unjoined up, when the ecosystem is sort of built to make everybody fail, that's just so demoralizing and it gets in the way. So this is something that enables the whole ecosystem to just be much more manageable, yeah, and joined up. And there's never been a global centre of gravity, there's never been a global place for a community of non-profit financial professionals to gather before. So before 2019, when we started this project, whenever accountants would gather, they would talk about you know corporate things to do consolidation and leases and whatever, which is really of no interest to non-profits. And whenever non-profits would gather, they would talk about wash and the climate change and all these important, you know, social justice and poverty eradication. Crucial, but they wouldn't talk about accounts. There was nowhere for people to come together. So I've I've seen so many times over the last six years, you speak to a non-profit finance professional, and they're like, Oh, you mean I'm not alone? You mean these these things I've been struggling with are not just me thinking the world has gone mad. It's been so validating to find, you know, when people have said, wow, I'm not the only one that thinks this is completely bonkers. There is a better way, but we needed to come together. Also, the power dynamics between nonprofits and their donors and regulators and auditors has been so difficult for nonprofits to navigate. Um, how can I have an argument with or discussion with my donor about my reporting format? They're the donor, they have the money, they say I jump. Now it's possible for even a non-profit organization discussing with their donor, they could say, I've set up my systems to be able to report against this donor reporting format. Would it be possible to use that? If you do, we can get your reports together really quickly and accurately, and we've got all the systems to do it. You know, it just puts an NPO on a stronger negotiating footing. Likewise with auditors, often auditors, and I've seen so many times when there've been battles between auditors and NPOs about just things that really don't matter to the mission, revenue recognition, whatever. How do you interpret your bottom line surplus on profit and tax issues and just so many things that are a distraction, but there's no you can't ignore them, but dealing with them takes a lot of emotional energy. Impasse just takes that away. Like there's an international standard now. We don't have to argue about it, we just know what to follow and we can do it, and we can spend less energy arguing about things that didn't really have a right answer or a wrong answer, but the the inconsistency was the problem. So I'm seeing a lot of positivity from the non-profits themselves, from auditors and from donors, they're really keen because on one level they're giving something up. They're like, Well, uh, I've had my reporting formats, and then I've got to use this in PaaS one. So there is a level of they've got to change something, and why would they? Like they've got they don't need to, nobody tells them what to do. But what they gain is within PaaS, they can see their own grant report within the context of the entity as a whole. You can get much stronger and more efficient audit assurance, which they do care about. So this is giving them something they care about, but in it at the same time, they need to give something that's a benefit to the multiple grantees as well. So it's a win-win. That's what's the nice thing about it. It feels like it's not at anybody's expense. It's something that the sector has been involved in, the profession has been involved in, and as a whole, it can make everything easier and smoother. And uh yeah, focus, get finances out of the way and be able to focus on what these organizations really exist for.
SPEAKER_02Okay, thank you so, so much. And again, in six months, I'll be back to ask you questions on how far we have gone, and hopefully the talks with other countries would have progressed far more.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and I'm sure we'll have some Kenya and Ethiopia. Yeah, Ethiopia. We'll have some more announcements. Yeah, thank you so so much. Thank you. It's been a pleasure too. Thank you.
SPEAKER_02And a quick look at the market. The African Export Input Bank, AFIEXM Bank, reported a 2025 profit of 1.15 billion US dollars, about 1.5 trillion naira up from$973.5 million in 2024, reflecting improved earnings performance. The growth was supported by interest income, reflecting a steady expansion in lending as loans and advances hit 45 trillion naira. Non-interest income improved with net fees and commissions rising up to 552 billion naira, while contributions from other operating incomes of 101.3 billion naira. Exchanges, exchange adjustments of 30 billion naira and fair gains a value of 70 billion naira helped offset higher expenses. According to the bank, total assets rose approximately 46.7 trillion naira, reflecting a 19.9% year in year increase, driven largely by the expansion of loans and advances across its corporations. And a quick review of the other story, Snapchat has commented. Snapchat has announced plans to lay off about 16% of its global workforce, affecting roughly 1,000 employees as part of restructuring efforts aimed at improving efficiency and cutting costs. The development was disclosed in a memo sent by center staff by CEO Ivan Spiegel on Wednesday, which was also made public through a regulatory filing. The move counts as Snapchat looks to reposition its business amid growing competition in social media and digital advertising space. Snapchat says a layoffs are driven in part by advancements in artificial intelligence, which it believes can help streamline operations and reduce repetitive tasks. According to Speagle, rapid advancements in artificial intelligence enables their teams to reduce repetitive work, increase velocity, and also better support their community partners and advertisers. He adds that internal teams are already leveraging AI tools to improve key areas of business, including Snapchat Plus, advertising performance, and infrastructure efficiency. Thank you for always waking up with us. Good morning, Africa, as a product of the K Financial. If you have suggestions or check out more stories, visit the website, Africa Financial. Don't forget to subscribe. You can find us on all social media platforms at the K Financial, and you can find me at WitherDo.