She encourages young professionals to pursue senior positions rather than allow their age to limit their ambitions
Dar es Salaam. At 33, Isabella Victor Mwambalaswa is among Tanzania’s younger chief financial officers (CFOs), having held the position for nearly two years at a company involved in logistics, infrastructure and energy.
She will be among the speakers at the upcoming CFO of the Future Summit at Serena Hotel in Dar es Salaam, which will bring together finance executives from across East Africa.
Mwambalaswa holds a first-class honours degree in Accounting and Finance from the University of the West of England (UWE Bristol), obtained through a twinning programme with Taylor’s University in Malaysia.
She also completed the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) qualification in Malaysia.
More than a decade after returning to Tanzania, she says her international education and exposure have shaped her career.
Her experience also reflects the growing number of Tanzanians returning home with skills and knowledge acquired abroad. She was employed soon after returning. For Mwambalaswa, studying abroad was partly driven by curiosity. She initially considered South Africa but could not find the course she wanted.
“I wanted to study a Bachelor’s in Accounting and Finance, but they were offering all these other things. So I researched and found that Malaysia was a very safe place to go,” she says.
Her two years in Malaysia exposed her to a different culture and way of life. Language was not a major barrier because her studies were conducted in English, although she learnt some Bahasa Melayu, Malaysia’s national language.
She also experienced the country’s strict enforcement of immigration rules, including police roadblocks where foreigners were required to produce identification.
After two years, her programme took her to Bristol in England to continue her studies. Moving to the colder British weather was an adjustment. “I suffered several bouts of flu, but after a while, I became well adjusted,” she says.
She describes her lecturers as friendly and the local community as welcoming, although living costs were higher than in Malaysia. She later returned to Kuala Lumpur to complete her ACCA studies.
Mwambalaswa believes Tanzania can learn from some aspects of overseas education, particularly programmes that develop practical skills alongside academic qualifications. “Life-related courses, as a country, we can borrow,” she says, citing confidence-building, money management and public speaking.
She believes internet access is also narrowing differences between education systems, allowing students to access knowledge and training from around the world.
Her participation in the CFO summit will give her an opportunity to discuss how the finance profession is changing and the role of younger professionals.
Mwambalaswa says she initially questioned why organisers had selected her alongside more experienced CFOs. She was told they wanted different perspectives, including from younger professionals and those working outside traditional financial sectors.
“They noticed that I represented a different industry. They noticed that I’m a bit young, which aligns with their theme, ‘CFO of the Future’, exploring how our role is changing,” she says.
She encourages young professionals to pursue senior positions rather than allow their age to limit their ambitions.
“Definitely not! They should go for it,” she says when asked whether young people should step aside for older colleagues when offered senior roles.
However, she says career progression requires continuous learning.
Technology, including artificial intelligence, is already changing how financial analysis and other tasks are performed.
“As a CFO, I studied 10 years back. There’s so much that has transpired over the 10 years. So if I don’t make myself relevant, I run the risk of being obsolete,” she says.
Her advice to young professionals is straightforward: continue studying, undertake additional training and keep updating skills to remain relevant in a changing workplace.
