I founded Dickson Associates, I was the first General Manager of Uganda's largest SACCO, and I have spent twenty years turning financial knowledge into practice inside East African institutions.
My professional journey has been built around one central belief: strong financial institutions are built through strong financial management, effective governance, accountable leadership and capable people.
I began my career in accounting and financial management, developing a foundation in financial reporting, audit, compliance and business advisory. Over time, my work expanded beyond the numbers to focus on the systems, people and decisions that determine whether an institution performs sustainably.
Practice: Founder and Managing Partner, Dickson Associates CPA
Qualifications: CPA (Uganda), CPA (Rwanda), MBA
Memberships: ICPAU, ICPAR
Based: Kigali, Rwanda and Kampala, Uganda
Languages: English, Swahili, Kinyarwanda
This is the understanding that shaped my approach, and it is the reason my work moved from auditing institutions to rebuilding them.
Weak financial performance can be connected to weak controls.
Weak controls can be connected to governance gaps.
Governance gaps can be connected to inadequate skills and unclear accountability.
Diagnose the institution, understand the root cause, and turn financial knowledge into practical action.
A USAID programme, working with savings and credit institutions on financial analysis and performance monitoring.
More than fifty institutions audited in two years, learning what a failing loan book looks like in the records and in the members' lives.
Built and ran a technical team of eighty, covering accounting, audit, financial management and strategic planning across the union's member SACCOs.
Uganda's largest SACCO, serving UPDF and Ministry of Finance staff. I built the lending, accounting and control systems from nothing and held portfolio at risk below 2% while it grew.
Funded by IFAD, and still in use by boards across the region. It is the direct ancestor of the Governance Scorecard published on this site.
Long-running support to the Trlop, Luweero, Mukono and Kayunga Teachers SACCOs, the kind of continuity that a project cannot provide.
Growing it into a professional advisory and accounting practice serving organisations with needs in audit, accounting, financial management, compliance and business advisory. Today the firm operates with a wider East African professional team.
Developed the national turnaround strategy for Uganda's cooperative sector and the regulations that followed it.
Team leader on a Cordaid programme across 14 districts. Cooperative governance and formalisation of artisanal mining enterprises with UNDP. Cooperative development in the Bidi Bidi settlement with Mercy Corps and IOM.
Capacity building across 22 MFIs and SACCOs in lending, risk, compliance and digital finance.
I founded Dickson Associates CPA, a regional firm of Certified Public Accountants accredited by ICPAR, ICPAU, RRA and BNR, serving institutions and enterprises across Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania and South Sudan.
About the firm →I founded Dickson Financial Academy, where SACCOs, MFIs, cooperatives and MSMEs learn financial governance through a curriculum and monthly clinics.
Visit the Academy →My journey has evolved from doing professional work to transferring it, through training, clinics, advisory engagements and case-based learning.
How I teach →Most of the work I do could have been avoided by a board asking harder questions a year earlier. If your institution is approaching an audit, an inspection or a funding round, that is the moment to call.