Alumni of the Month

Abdiel Abayo is our UDSM Alumnus of the Month April. He is the University’s graduate of the 1981 graduating class. He first enrolled into the University in 1978, undertaking a bachelor’s degree programme in commerce (B.Com) in the-then Faculty of Commerce and Management; and he took the Accounting option.

He hails from Mara region in the northern part of Tanzania, where he also attended the early phases of his formal education before moving on to the advanced levels of secondary and higher education. He secured admission at the University of Dar es Salaam in 1978, into the-then Faculty of Commerce and Management, for a three-year degree study programme. He majored in (concentrated on) accounting and finance. He completed the programme in 1981, earning a B.Com (honours), with such a resounding success that he was retained by the Faculty, as a tutorial assistant, for a subsequent postgraduate staff-development programme. In 1982 he obtained a scholarship for pursuing a masters’ degree programme in Business Administration at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium, which he successfully completed in 1984. For the next four years (1984-88), he collaborated with fellow staff at the Faculty in teaching a variety of courses and supervising students. In 1988, he got another postgraduate study opportunity (a scholarship offer) to embark on a doctoral study programme at the University of Glasgow in Scotland. The doctoral study took him four years from 1988 to 1992.

Upon return from overseas, Dr. Abayo played a number of roles as a full-time member of staff, particularly in teaching certain key courses and supervising both undergraduates and masters’ research students. He took on an increasing number of responsibilities primarily in his department, and progressively at Faculty level and finally at institutional level. He grew up through the academic ranks from Tutorial Assistant (1981-1984), to Assistant Lecturer (1984-1992), Lecturer (1992) and subsequently to Senior Lecturer. Along with his teaching duties, he was trusted, by faculty and university-level consensus, to serve at different times as Head of Department of Accounting, then Associate Dean for Research and Publications (1993-1994), as well as Deputy Manager, PMU [Programme Management Unit] (1993-1998). The latter was during the University’s very …period of a “University Transformation Programme”, which began as early as 1991/92.

In 1998, Dr Abayo left University service to join and serve a newly formed government agency—the Capital Markets and Securities Authority (CMSA)—which he and his colleagues both in the Faculty and outside the University had helped to build within a brooding period of two to three years. It was a structure through which the Tanzanian Government sought to oversee the capital-markets business in Tanzania, to develop and coordinate purposeful investor/public education programmes towards financial returns through stock-exchange platforms and companies. The Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange was one such a company which he, too, participated in forming in 1996 and which he and his colleagues tried to encourage Tanzanians (including colleagues at UDSM) to buy shares from. He worked for CMSA first as Director of Operations and Financial Services for about 8½ years from February 1998–May 2006. Then, for the next almost 7½ years, he served in the capacity of Director of Market Supervision and Market Development (February 2006–June 2013). Abdiel and his colleagues will certainly be remembered for the innovation in the world of finance, and for stimulating an increasingly aware, business-minded and a progressively participating Tanzanian public.

As a finance and accounting expert, Dr. Abayo has rendered his professional service not only to the University but also to the Government and the public. He has also shared his experiences in other ways. For instance, for a long period of eleven years, from May 1995 to 2006), he has served as Chairman of the Board of the Institute of Accountancy (IAA) in Arusha. Also, as part of knowledge sharing exchange, Abdiel Abayo has published a number of publications, including:  

• ‘The accountability and corporate disclosure practices in Tanzania’ (1992), based on his original research for his PhD dissertation;
• ‘Measuring the quality of corporate disclosure in less developed countries: The case of Tanzania’ (with Carol A. Adams and Clare B. Roberts, 1993);  and
• ‘Does Training More Accountants Raise the Standard of Accounting? Further Evidence from Tanzania' (with C.B. Roberts, 1993).

In further sharing his knowledge and experience with others in the academia and out in the world of corporate management, Dr. Abayo has—at various times—dedicated his time and energy to teaching, mentoring as well as couching young scholars at Tumaini University Dar es Salaam College (TUDARCO) and at the Open University of Tanzania (OUT), both located in Dar es Salaam. At the latter, he has served on the University’s Editorial Board that publishes the Pan-African Journal of Business Management, hosted at the Faculty of Business Management.

Needless to say that he continues to take interest in the economic growth of Tanzania through the principles and healthy operations of the Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange (DSE) for the benefit of both the Tanzanian nation and the individual investors.

UDSM remembers and appreciates the kind and range of contribution Dr. Abayo has made over the years. It wishes him well in all his endeavours.