Stephanie Anyamele is the founding principal of Charles Ardor and Company, a Nigeria-based professional services firm delivering outsourced bookkeeping, accounting, reporting, compliance, and strategic financial advisory to Africa-focused businesses and nonprofits. She holds a BSc in Accounting and Finance from the University of Birmingham, UK, and she is a Chartered Accountant with the Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales (ICAEW). In this interview with KENNETH ATHEKAME, she discusses the evolution of Nigeria’s financial services ecosystem especially for SMEs and nonprofits and explains how businesses can build resilient cash-flow management systems in an increasingly unpredictable environment. Excerpts:
You founded Charles Ardor & Company with the vision of building a firm that matches global standards while staying rooted in African realities. How has that vision shaped your advisory approach?
My vision has always been to hold African enterprises to the same standards as the best global firms while acknowledging the realities of our environment. My training at Ernst & Young UK shaped my expectations around discipline, reporting quality, and structure.
Bringing those standards home required translating them into tools and systems that Nigerian SMEs and nonprofits can actually use. I am not advising from the outside; I am also a Nigerian entrepreneur who understands the constraints. That combination allows me to design advisory and tax structures that meet international expectations but still function under local pressures. The goal is simple: build companies that can survive, scale, and compete anywhere, not just here.
Having worked across audit, reporting, and enterprise advisory, how do you see the evolution of Nigeria’s financial services ecosystem, especially for SMEs and nonprofits?
The evolution has been uneven. Awareness is increasing, but the gap is still wide. Many SMEs still view structured finance as a compliance burden rather than a strategic advantage. This stems from years of poor service delivery and an overemphasis on penalties instead of value. Nonprofits tend to be ahead because grant funding forces discipline. SMEs often prioritise structure only when an investor demands it. Compared to markets like the UK or US, where business owners actively seek clarity, many Nigerian entrepreneurs still wait for external triggers.
The shift is happening especially as more businesses pursue investment and cross-border opportunities but we still have a long way to go before structure becomes a natural expectation.
What were your initial challenges in establishing a firm that balances global best practices with local realities?
One of the earliest challenges was that many clients wanted high-level advisory without the underlying data to support it. When offering CFO-level services, I repeatedly hit the same wall: the reporting infrastructure didn’t exist. You cannot plan or forecast around a vacuum, so we had to focus on building foundational systems first.
Another challenge was value perception. Businesses were willing to invest heavily in sales roles but treated financial structure as optional. The language of the market didn’t match the language of professional services. It took time to communicate value in a way business owner immediately understood. Credibility grew through consistent delivery and clearer positioning.
Nigerian businesses struggle with irregular cash flow due to delayed payments, FX volatility, and inflation. From your experience, what internal structural issues most affect liquidity?
Environmental pressures matter, but internal weaknesses often do more damage. Many businesses lack working capital discipline and operate without real cash-flow forecasting, so cash shortages feel sudden even when they were predictable. Systems are typically weak—manual reporting, inconsistent reviews, and poor approval controls create blind spots. Pricing is another issue; businesses don’t adjust quickly enough to reflect cost changes, and margins erode quietly.
Governance also plays a role. Many companies still operate like one-man structures, leading to reactive spending and delayed decisions. External volatility only becomes overwhelming because most companies lack buffers, risk management practices, and proper credit control.
How can startups and nonprofits build more resilient cash-flow management systems in such an unpredictable environment?
Resilience starts with structure. Businesses need a weekly cash-flow rhythm, not an occasional review. A 13-week rolling cash-flow forecast should be at the centre of that rhythm because it forces leaders to look ahead instead of reacting to the bank balance. Next is ownership. Cash flow cannot belong to “everyone.” It must be assigned to a specific role that monitors inflows, outflows, timing gaps, and runway and raises flags early.
Finally, resilience requires decision rules. Monitoring is useless without predefined triggers for spending adjustments, pricing reviews, collection escalations, or buffer levels. Companies that survive uncertainty treat cash-flow management as a system with clear inputs, responsibilities, and responses.
With over ₦1 billion in transactions under your oversight, what patterns have you observed in how Nigerian enterprises handle working capital?
Working capital is often treated as an afterthought. Many SMEs operate reactively they focus on today without modelling the next cycle. Liquidity issues keep catching them off guard even when the signals are obvious.
There is also a disproportionate focus on inflows. Business owners track what is coming in but pay far less attention to what is due to go out or the timing gaps between both. That pressure affects pricing, margins, and recurring obligations.
Across sectors, the pattern is the same: limited forward planning, weak visibility, and surprise liquidity events that should not be surprises.
Can technology and automation significantly close the cash-flow management gap for SMEs? How?
Absolutely. We see it every day. For clients using Zoho Books and Zoho Analytics, the difference is immediate. Invoicing, collections tracking, approvals, and reconciliations are automated, eliminating delays and inconsistencies that distort cash-flow visibility.
Dashboards update in real time, giving leadership a clear picture of obligations, inflows, and timing gaps. The greatest benefit is discipline. Once the system is configured, it enforces structure transactions are captured correctly, reports are generated on schedule, and monitoring becomes routine.
Technology does not solve every cash-flow challenge, but it removes the blind spots created by manual processes and enables earlier, better decisions.
What common mistakes do Nigerian businesses make in tax reporting and planning, especially in light of the 2025 Tax Act?
Three mistakes show up consistently.
First is payroll structure. Many employers negotiate salaries without clarifying whether the amount discussed is gross or net. When payroll is reviewed, they discover they have been absorbing statutory costs that should have formed part of the employee’s gross pay.
Second is VAT. VAT is a pass-through tax, yet many businesses fail to incorporate it into their pricing. We often see companies with strong sales but weakened margins because they were paying VAT out of pocket.
Third is relying on advisers who promise shortcuts. We’ve been brought in multiple times to clean up tax positions mishandled by advisers who prioritised convenience over compliance. The cleanup cost is always far higher than doing things correctly from the start.
How can organisations better align tax efficiency with ethical and transparent governance?
Tax efficiency aligns with ethical governance when the organisation builds systems that support both. Companies with the strongest tax outcomes typically have clean records, documented decisions, and defined approval structures. They optimise their tax position because the underlying data is accurate, not because they pursue shortcuts.
Tax planning must be proactive. When transactions are recorded correctly, payroll structured properly, and documentation kept complete, efficiency becomes a natural outcome of good governance.
Ultimately, leadership sets the tone. When boards and senior executives insist on transparency, the finance team can plan efficiently without stepping outside ethical boundaries.
As a Zoho Partner, how has fintech changed the way companies manage compliance and reporting?
Zoho Books may not be fintech in the payments sense, but it sits squarely in the financial technology space because it transforms how data is captured, processed, and reported. The biggest shift it brings is clarity.
With structured systems instead of scattered spreadsheets, finance teams gain cleaner data, stronger audit trails, and more reliable bases for compliance. Automation removes bottlenecks—approvals, reconciliations, bank feeds, and document management become routine rather than manual tasks.
For compliance, this means filings are based on accurate records rather than last-minute cleanups. For reporting, leadership can trust the numbers because the system has done the heavy lifting.
AI is reshaping finance globally. What do you believe is possible beyond where we are today?
AI is already transforming reporting. Tasks that once took hours transaction categorisation, reconciliations, and baseline dashboards now happen automatically once systems are set up correctly. This frees finance teams to focus on interpretation and strategy.
The next shift is scale. With AI handling mechanics, growing businesses no longer need to expand finance teams at the same pace just to maintain discipline. Systems can generate multiple reporting views, highlight patterns, and flag risks in real time.
Looking ahead, the real opportunity is adaptive reporting—systems that learn the business well enough to surface issues or opportunities before anyone requests a report. Forecasts will adjust automatically. Reporting will shift from backward-looking summaries to forward-looking intelligence.
What role does data integrity play in strengthening governance and investor confidence?
Data integrity holds everything together. When a business presents numbers, the first question is how those numbers were produced. If the underlying systems are weak, credibility collapses immediately.
For governance, reliable data enables leaders to make sound decisions, enforce controls, and understand the organisation’s true position. Without it, everything is guesswork.
For investors, confidence is tied to transparency. They may like the founder or the idea, but they still need assurance that the business can produce trustworthy information consistently.
How do you balance automation with the need for human oversight in strategic decision-making?
Automation handles mechanics but cannot replace judgment. The first safeguard is proper system configuration automation will only produce what it has been designed to understand.
After that, disciplined review becomes essential. In our firm, every output goes through multiple layers of checks. Team members self-review, senior reviewers ask whether the numbers make sense, and we consider how non-financial leaders will interpret the information.
Strategic decisions still require context—understanding the business model, the market, and organisational priorities. Automation frees time to focus on these areas.
Your board role at Addosser Finance gives you a front-row seat to SME lending. What has that taught you about financial inclusion?
Serving on the board of a lending institution gives you a clearer view of the gap between what SMEs believe the lending process requires and what proper risk assessment actually needs. Many businesses want credit, but a significant number are not structurally ready for it.
Their data is incomplete, reporting inconsistent, and governance practices weak making verification difficult. These gaps limit access, not because institutions are unwilling to lend, but because they cannot take on unverifiable risk.
When businesses have clean records, proper controls, and clarity around their numbers, lending conversations change completely. What appears to be a financial inclusion challenge is often a documentation and governance challenge.
You also moderate conversations on entrepreneurship and inclusive development. How do finance and governance intersect with social impact in your work?
My public engagements are a natural extension of my work inside organisations. When you help businesses build structure, strengthen governance, and make sense of their numbers, you begin to see the patterns that hold founders back.
So, in public forums, I focus on simplifying financial discipline and helping entrepreneurs understand why structure matters. These are practical insights not theory drawn from what we see daily across SMEs and nonprofits. When people understand how reporting, governance, and clarity drive long-term outcomes, their decision-making improves. That is where my public-facing and professional work meet.
Looking ahead, what steps must Nigerian enterprises take to build transparent, scalable, globally competitive financial systems?
Enterprises must shift from survival-driven behaviour to systems-driven behaviour. Without that shift, nothing else becomes scalable or transparent.
First, they need consistent financial discipline: weekly reviews, timely reconciliations, clear documentation, and proper cash-flow monitoring.
Second, they must strengthen internal structures: clean charts of accounts, defined approval limits, documented processes, and technology that captures data accurately.
Third, they must upgrade governance boards to function, finance teams must have authority, and decisions must be based on facts, not convenience.
When these shifts happen, competitiveness follows naturally.
Finally, what advice would you give young finance professionals navigating technology, ethics, and leadership in Africa?
Be clear about two things: your judgment and your integrity. Technology will keep changing the way finance works, but the value of a finance professional remains in interpreting data, challenging assumptions, and guiding decisions.
Engage with technology rather than avoiding it. Strengthen your business acumen. Build the ability to think forward, not just backward.
And never trade integrity for convenience. Ethical clarity will distinguish real leaders from technicians. Without integrity, nothing you build will hold.
