Recent & past consulting experience.

Objective

In March 2025, Arthur Consulting Associates (CPA-K) was appointed by UNICEF Somalia to provide micro-assessment services to one of UNICEF's implementing partners in Somalia — the Ministry of Women, Family Affairs and Human Rights Development in the South West State of Somalia. The micro assessment evaluated the partner's financial-management capacity (accounting, procurement, reporting, internal controls, and so on) to determine the overall risk rating and assurance activities. The overall risk rating — the primary output of the micro assessment, rated low, moderate, significant or high — relates to cash transfers to the partner and, together with other available information, is used to determine the engagement terms between UNICEF and the partner and the type and frequency of assurance activities. The assessment covered the period 1 March 2025 to 31 May 2025.

Reference documentation reviewed

• Contacts for each implementing partner and the partner notification letters for the assignment.
• A copy of the latest macro assessment performed for the country.
• UN agency work plan(s) and programme documents with the partner.
• Reports of any prior micro assessments or related reviews (for example, a review of the partner's or country's public procurement system for compatibility with UN procurement rules and regulations).
• Reports of any prior financial or internal-control audits and spot checks performed on the partner, plus partner and programme information.
• Any other documentation that helps the auditors better understand the context from a United Nations perspective.

Services we provided

The micro assessment included a site visit to the partner and consisted primarily of interviews with partner personnel and a review of documentation sufficient to complete the micro-assessment questionnaire. Specifically, we:

• Prepared a standard agreed-upon-procedures report in accordance with the applicable standards.
• Prepared a micro-assessment work plan and a report detailing the work performed.
• Facilitated consultation with the partner for final comments and sign-off, with recommendations and action points for the partner or UNICEF on the provided template.
• Provided a summary-of-findings table (on UNICEF's template) and a trend analysis of major findings.
• Updated eTools throughout — during field visits, on issuing draft reports to the partner, on receiving partner comments, on issuing the draft to UNICEF, on receiving UNICEF comments, and on uploading all final reports and the summary of high/low-priority findings.
• Uploaded the final signed reports and signed exit-meeting minutes on eTools, completing the engagement with all required details.

Assignment

Engaged by the World Food Programme Country Office in Mogadishu as sole consultant to provide a rapid feasibility study for roads and river transportation of humanitarian cargo across the Hirshabelle, Southwest and Jubaland states of southern Somalia. The assignment ran from 10 December 2024 to 9 March 2025 (90 man-days).

Deliverables

• Data collection tools for WFP's input before the actual data collection. WFP greenlit the tools and directed us to proceed with engaging and training the data-enumeration teams.
• Inception report detailing our methodology and the relevant stakeholders to engage, so that actual, detailed and useful data was derived from the study locations.
• Rapid feasibility report — a comprehensive report detailing road conditions, distances, bridges and the truck weights they can bear, with recommendations on each route's suitability for humanitarian cargo transport at state and district level, maps and routes, and the available transport and warehousing capacities across the targeted states.
• Risk analysis — a detailed analysis of risks for each route with recommended mitigation measures.
• Contact list of stakeholders interviewed during the process.

Assignment

Provision of audit services for the audits of Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) institutions on behalf of the Office of the Auditor-General for financial year 2022–2023, in Mombasa and Kilifi (November 2024 to January 2025, 60 man-days).

Institutions audited

• Taveta Technical and Vocational College
• Wumingu Technical and Vocational College
• Godoma Technical Training Institute
• Weru Technical and Vocational College
• Garsen Technical and Vocational College
• Tana River Technical and Vocational College
• Fayya Technical and Vocational College

Deliverables

• Audit working-papers file.
• Final audited financial statements.
• Management letter.
• Auditor's verification of responses to the management letter by each TVET management.
• Proposed draft audit report.

Assignment

Independent verification of the Recurrent Cost and Reform Financing (RCRF) eligible-expenditure programme for FY 2022/23, in Mogadishu, on behalf of the Office of the Auditor General of Somalia and the Ministry of Finance for the World Bank (229 man-days). The engagement substantively entailed establishing a functional organisation to carry out independent-verification work, as follows:

• Designing and documenting roles, responsibilities and workflows within the technical-assistance team, as well as interfaces with the Auditor General and the FMS-level audit offices in the case of the FMS-level performance-based conditions.
• Establishing and operationalising an information-technology (IT) enabled secure document-management system suitable to support the verification work.
• Designing and documenting an approach to safeguarding the independence of team members and of the verification function, guided by the principles, safeguards and guidance in ISSAI 10 (Mexico Declaration on SAI Independence) and ISSAI 11 (Guidelines and Good Practices Related to SAI Independence), with residual threats to independence documented.
• Designing and documenting a Quality Management System — putting in place adequate structures, policies, procedures and tools to ensure competency and safeguard the verification function — considering the guidance in ISSAI 40 Quality Control for SAIs.
• Designing and documenting policies and procedures to ensure confidentiality of data obtained through the independent-verification activities.
• Designing and documenting an independent-verification approach for the initiation and operational phases, including: the strategy for the planning, execution and completion cycles; an assessment of areas for verification focus; reporting arrangements for when and how the verification function reports to the World Bank RCRF Project Task Team Leader through the RCRF Project Implementation Unit (PIU) housed in the Ministry of Finance; and a communication plan for engagement with management and others subject to the work.
• Planning a capacity-building and skills-transfer mechanism to enable the Office of the Auditor General staff to undertake such verification exercises on their own in future, providing on-the-job training during the verification and reporting stages, and validating the structures, policies, procedures and tools developed with the Auditor General.

Objective

Arthur Consulting Associates (CPA-K) was appointed by UNICEF Somalia to audit four of UNICEF's implementing partners in Somalia. The audit objective was to give UNICEF reasonable assurance as to whether the financial statements were free from material misstatement, whether due to fraud or error, enabling us to express an opinion on whether they were prepared, in all material respects, in accordance with an applicable financial reporting framework. This required understanding the purpose for which the funds were intended in the context of programme objectives and the specific programme budget, and establishing whether funds were properly supported with approved documentation and used for the intended purpose in accordance with the approved budget, the applicable funding agreement and the organisation's policies and procedures. The audits covered the period 1 October 2021 to 30 September 2022 and were conducted in accordance with ISA 800 (Special Considerations — Audits of Financial Statements Prepared in Accordance with Special Purpose Frameworks).

Reference documentation reviewed

• Country Programme Action Plan, project agreements / project documents and rolling / annual work plans.
• Statement of expenses (Combined Delivery Report or its equivalent).
• Statement of assets and equipment; statement of cash position; statement of inventory (as applicable).
• Work plans and any other relevant reports.
• Financial Authorization and Certification of Expenses (FACE) forms included in the statement of expenses, duly certified for accuracy and completeness.
• Direct payment requests authorised by the implementing partner.
• Spot-check and field-monitoring reports across finance, operations and compliance management of the partner.
• List of disbursements made by UNICEF as part of support services, and previous audit reports and other relevant assessments (for example, micro assessments).

Services we provided

Undertaking a financial audit of four UNICEF implementing partners in Somalia, we:

• Expressed opinions on the statements, based on our audit, about whether they were free from material misstatement.
• Conducted the audits in accordance with the International Standards on Auditing, complying with ethical requirements and planning and performing the audit to obtain reasonable assurance.
• Performed procedures to obtain audit evidence about the amounts and disclosures in the statements.
• Selected procedures based on our judgment, including assessing the risks of material misstatement, whether due to fraud or error.
• Made risk assessments considering internal control relevant to the preparation of the statements, in order to design audit procedures appropriate in the circumstances (but not to express an opinion on the effectiveness of internal control).
• Evaluated the appropriateness of the accounting policies used and the reasonableness of accounting estimates, as well as the presentation of the statements.
• Obtained sufficient and appropriate evidence to provide a basis for our audit opinion.

Objective

Arthur Consulting Associates (CPA-K) was appointed by UNICEF Somalia to provide micro-assessment services to five of UNICEF's implementing partners in Somalia. The micro assessment evaluated each partner's financial-management capacity (accounting, procurement, reporting, internal controls, and so on) to determine the overall risk rating and assurance activities. The overall risk rating — the primary output, rated low, moderate, significant or high — relates to cash transfers to the partners and, with other available information, determines the engagement terms between UNICEF and each partner and the type and frequency of assurance activities. The assessments covered the period 15 May 2023 to 31 July 2023.

Reference documentation reviewed

• Contacts for each implementing partner and the partner notification letters for the assignment.
• A copy of the latest macro assessment performed for the country.
• UN agency work plan(s) and programme documents with the partner.
• Reports of any prior micro assessments or related reviews (for example, a review of the partner's or country's public procurement system for compatibility with UN procurement rules and regulations).
• Reports of any prior financial or internal-control audits and spot checks performed on the partner, plus partner and programme information.
• Any other documentation that helps the auditors better understand the context from a United Nations perspective.

Services we provided

The micro assessment included a site visit to the partner and consisted primarily of interviews with partner personnel and a review of documentation sufficient to complete the micro-assessment questionnaire. Specifically, we:

• Prepared a standard agreed-upon-procedures report in accordance with the applicable standards.
• Prepared a micro-assessment work plan and a report detailing the work performed.
• Facilitated consultation with the partner for final comments and sign-off, with recommendations and action points for the partner or UNICEF on the provided template.
• Provided a summary-of-findings table (on UNICEF's template) and a trend analysis of major findings.
• Updated eTools throughout — during field visits, on issuing draft reports to the partner, on receiving partner comments, on issuing the draft to UNICEF, on receiving UNICEF comments, and on uploading all final reports and the summary of high/low-priority findings.
• Uploaded the final signed reports and signed exit-meeting minutes on eTools, completing the engagement with all required details.