By Terrance M. Booysen (CGF Research Institute: CEO)
When PwC, one of the most recognised global audit and assurance brands, announced its withdrawal from nine African markets (16 April 2025), the news sent ripples across the business and governance sectors. While some may interpret this as a retreat from complex environments, it may instead reflect deeper shifts within the governance and assurance landscape. In a region where agility and contextual understanding are critical, this move presents both a challenge and an opportunity – particularly in how we rethink governance and the role of assurance providers.
Rethinking governance: Beyond compliance
For decades, governance has often been seen through the narrow lens of compliance, namely a means to meet regulatory obligations or satisfy stakeholder expectations. But governance, at its core, is a leadership responsibility: it is the system by which organisations are directed, managed and held to account. In an era marked by heightened risks, evolving stakeholder demands and expanding sustainability expectations, governance must evolve beyond static models into dynamic, digitally enabled practices.
As we’ve argued in prior writings, governance is not a one-time event, nor a checklist. It’s a living, adaptive process that requires ongoing monitoring, adjustment and assurance. This evolution calls for fresh thinking, not only within boardrooms, but also among external assurance providers who are entrusted to independently assess an organisation’s governance integrity and effectiveness.
The expanding assurance landscape
Traditionally, external assurance has focused predominantly on financial statements, ensuring compliance with international standards like IFRS. However, the governance of an organisation encompasses far more than its financials. Increasingly, external assurance must include the broader non-financial aspects of governance covering inter alia; ethical leadership, risk oversight, stakeholder communication and relationships, sustainability reporting, and operational transparency.
The concept of ‘combined assurance’ brings together various assurance providers (e.g. internal audit, risk management, compliance, external auditors and even regulators) to offer a cohesive, credible view of the organisation’s control environment. While audit firms have been instrumental in financial oversight, many are now expanding to offer governance-related assurance, and stepping into a space where a more integrated and contextual approach is required.
This is where the ‘lines of defense’ model comes into focus. Although not born from the auditing profession, this protection framework — which now expands to six (6) lines as advocated in King IVTM — enables organisations to structure and visualise their internal and external assurance mechanisms. External assurance providers, whether part of the Big Four or smaller independent firms, increasingly align their services to these lines to demonstrate the rigour of their evaluation.
Why smaller firms are poised to lead
PwC’s strategic exit from certain African territories does not diminish its global capabilities, but it does open a door. Smaller firms, often more embedded in local markets and less constrained by rigid global methodologies, are well positioned to respond to the unique governance needs of their clients. Their ability to tailor assurance approaches to organisational context is a major advantage, and with the right tools, they can offer assurance that is as credible as it is flexible.
This shift is not about displacing the Big Four; rather, it’s about broadening the ecosystem of governance assurance providers who can deliver nuanced, transparent, and agile services. For large and small firms alike, the key to delivering this value lies in digital transformation.
The role of digitised governance frameworks
In today’s environment, real-time visibility into governance activities is not a luxury – it’s essential. Without transparency and traceability, governance assurance becomes speculative at best. Digitised governance frameworks offer a practical way to monitor, manage, and evidence governance practices across the entire organisational spectrum.
PraefectusTM is one such platform designed to do just that. It operates within the client’s environment, empowering governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) teams — including internal audit — to track governance performance in real-time. More importantly, it provides external assurance providers with a single, shared view of the organisation’s governance landscape.
This transparency enables external assurance providers to independently assess the governance maturity of an organisation. By accessing the same governance data, evidence, and contextual information as the client, external assessors can deliver more objective, data-backed evaluations that transcend subjective opinions typically found in the first two lines of defense. With the rise of non-financial reporting obligations, this capability becomes critical to mitigating risk and ensuring accountability.
The flexibility of digitised frameworks like PraefectusTM also allows for alignment with expanded assurance models, including the six lines of defense advocated in King IVTM. This provides both assurance providers and organisational leadership with a reliable, evidence-based understanding of governance strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities for improvement.
A call for future-ready governance
The future of governance is not about conforming to one model or methodology. It’s about creating systems that are adaptive, data-driven, and context-aware. It’s about enabling leadership teams — and their assurance providers — to detect governance blind spots, respond quickly, and demonstrate accountability with confidence.
Digitised governance frameworks don’t replace people or processes, they empower them. They provide the infrastructure for assurance professionals, large or small, to add real value to their clients by strengthening control environments and illuminating the true state of governance within the organisation.
Closing thoughts
PwC’s departure from several African markets may well mark a pivotal moment – not just for large audit firms, but for the assurance profession at large. As demand grows for broader, non-financial governance assurance, new leadership will be required – not in name, but in practice.
Firms that embrace digital tools like PraefectusTM, and adopt a more holistic, transparent view of governance, will not only fill the gap left by global players, but they will also help reshape the governance landscape for the better.
Call to action
Interested in learning how a digitised governance framework can enhance your assurance capabilities or governance maturity? Let’s connect and explore what PraefectusTM can do for your organisation or firm.