Africa reverses the global picture: 51% of the continent’s finance professionals name leadership as their biggest ethical challenge, ahead of the use of AI (47%) and ethical culture (42%). Worldwide, AI now leads at 61%.
Leadership is the biggest ethical challenge facing finance and accountancy professionals in Africa, according to new research from ACCA (the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants) published to mark this year’s Global Ethics Day.
More than half (51%) of African respondents to ACCA’s Navigating ethics for trust survey named leadership as their top ethical challenge. The use of artificial intelligence (47%) and ethical culture (42%) complete the top three.
Across the global profession, AI has surged to first place, cited by 61% of respondents – almost double the 32% recorded in ACCA’s 2024 survey – with ethical leadership (43%) and ethical culture (39%) behind it. In Africa, concern about leadership runs eight percentage points above the global figure and concern about culture three points above it. The message from the continent is that the tone set from the top remains the profession’s most pressing ethical test, even as AI moves rapidly into finance functions.
The global survey, which draws on 1,178 responses from finance and accountancy professionals in 135 countries alongside roundtable discussions, finds a profession firmly anchored in its fundamental principles but working in conditions that are more pressured, complex and difficult to navigate. Half of respondents (50%) say ethical challenges have become harder to resolve over the past three years, and 53% report having witnessed unethical behaviour in that period.
The findings are consistent with wider evidence from the continent. ACCA’s Combatting fraud in a perfect storm report (November 2025) found that procurement fraud is the leading fraud risk in Africa, with a prevalence of 34%, and that bribery, corruption and payroll fraud occur at rates above global averages. Confidence in reporting fraud was lowest in SMEs and public-sector organisations, averaging 3.79 out of 5, with respondents calling for visible leadership commitment, independent investigations and follow-through on concerns raised.
AI is now a board-level priority across the continent. KPMG’s 2025 Africa CEO Outlook, covering 130 CEOs in Southern, East and West Africa, ranks AI as the top strategic priority for 2026, with 71% investing in it to improve operational efficiency.
Governance has not kept pace. The State of AI in African Banking 2026 survey by African Banker and Backbase, covering 277 senior banking executives in 37 African countries, found that 39.3% of early-stage AI adopters have no AI governance protocols in place, and only around a quarter (25.6%) have board-level involvement in AI strategy. Executive leadership teams were half as likely as finance teams to track the returns on AI investment (50% versus 82%). Taken together, the data show why African professionals rank leadership and AI so closely: as AI takes on more financial decisions, the quality of oversight, accountability and judgement at the top determines whether it builds or erodes trust.
Jane Ohadike, Regional Head of Public Affairs at ACCA, said: ‘The overall picture is one of a profession that remains ethically grounded, self-aware and willing to adapt. Finance professionals in Africa are not asking for more rules – the fundamental principles remain the ethical anchor. They are asking for the tools, support and guidance needed to apply those principles in an increasingly complex world.’
To help professionals put the principles into practice, the report includes a toolkit setting out a practical 10-step process for applying the International Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants (the IESBA Code) to real-world situations. Other key findings from the global survey reveal that 89% agree that ethical capability in the profession remains strong – but that it depends on continuous professional development and that trust in the profession rests on strong ethical standards (46%), transparency (38%) and independence (36%). It also showed that ethical leadership and ethical culture ranked among the top three ethical challenges in both the 2024 and 2026 surveys, underlining that enabling ethical behaviour is a shared responsibility, not one for individuals alone.
Jane Ohadike added: ‘Ethics has always been at the heart of the ACCA Qualification. We’re stepping that up still further when we introduce our redesigned qualification next year, which has ethics integrated throughout to help future generations navigate emerging challenges.’