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Managing Director, Barclays Zambia, Zambia

"The ACCA qualification took me to the UK , France and back home to Zambia . It acts like an international passport," says Margaret Mwanakatwe, explaining what benefits she has derived through ACCA.

A four year stop-over in France was unusual for an English-speaking Zambian but it provided Margaret with some of her fondest memories. "I was teaching accounting to MBA students. It was sometimes difficult to get the message across in English, so I had to resort to acting! We had quite a few laughs over that. I'll never forget it."

Teaching French students about financial management was nothing compared with the challenges Margaret faced trying to qualify as an ACCA accountant. As well as working and studying at the same time, she supported her husband, who was studying for a PhD, and raised two children.

Her career would have been quite different if she had continued her degree in medicine at the University of Zambia in Lusaka . After two terms she switched to a business administration degree and, during vacations, worked for some of the accounting firms where she found out about ACCA. Explaining her decision to study for ACCA, she says: "It struck me as something that I'd like to do and would give me the specialisation I needed because I felt that my business administration degree was too general. It was a good choice for me."

While studying in the UK , Margaret worked as a financial analyst, first with MacDonald Douglas Information Systems and then with Whitbread. When her husband took up a post in Paris , her qualification enabled her to take up the lecturing position. Her career took off when she returned to Zambia . After spells as a financial and general manager with a manufacturing firm and as a Director General at the Zambian Investment Promotions Agency, Margaret was asked to join Barclays Zambia as a non-executive director. She was the first woman to sit on the board of Barclays Zambia and, in 2000, she became the first female managing director of the company.

"Without my accounting background, I don't think I would be able to understand the banking business as well as I do," insists Margaret. Of the future, she says: "My challenge is to make sure that we continue to be the leading and most admired financial services institution in the country."