Beyond Compliance: The Movement to Elevate Integrity Across the Middle East & Africa

The Middle East & Africa Compliance Association (MEACA) is a professional association dedicated to advancing governance, risk, compliance, and ethical leadership across the Middle East and Africa. It brings together professionals, institutions, governments, and industry leaders to strengthen the practice of compliance, build meaningful professional connections, and elevate the role that integrity plays in the region’s economic and institutional development.

When MEACA first took shape in 2022, it was not conceived as an institution, but a response. MEACA did not start with a strategy deck or a founding charter. It started with a feeling many of us in this profession, particularly in the Middle East and Africa, had been carrying quietly for years, without ever quite articulating it: that the work we do — governance, risk, compliance — was becoming more demanding and that we were largely doing it in isolation.

Elvis Angyiembe recognized this first. Long before there was any organization to speak of, he began bringing people together in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It was nothing formal, just a room and a conversation, with professionals comparing notes on challenges that few outside the profession seemed to understand in quite the same way. When he asked me to help build on that foundation, I said yes for a simple reason: I recognized the gap he was describing, because I myself was living it working as a compliance and ethics professional in Dubai, UAE.

Together, we attempted to build something across two of the most complex regions in the world and there were long stretches where it was not obvious the effort would hold together. What sustained us was a conviction that this region holds more potential than it is often credited with, and that ethics and integrity sit at the center of further unlocking it. What began as a series of conversations in the UAE is becoming a permanent institution that is built from within the region, for the region.

We were not trying to reinvent the wheel. Well reputed international organizations such as the International Compliance Association (ICA), Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE), and the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics (SCCE) are established institutions doing critical, indispensable work, and we recognized their influence and input in these regions from the outset. But none, of course, were built with the Middle East and Africa as the starting point. What did not exist was a platform that allowed a compliance officer in Lagos, Nigeria to engage directly with a counterpart in Dubai, UAE or one in Nairobi, Kenya to compare notes with one in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. That gap became the founding purpose of MEACA: to connect professionals, give them a network to rely on, and help them do their work more effectively by enhancing their skillset.

At the same time, I never intended for this to be simply a professional association serving its own membership. That felt too narrow a mandate.

Much of compliance work is invisible from the outside, yet its effects are considerable. A bribe that does not take place, fraud that is caught before it does damage, funds that reach their intended purpose instead of being diverted along the way. Across a region, this adds up to real infrastructure, institutions the public can trust, and a level of confidence that shapes whether investment materializes at all. The beneficiaries of sound compliance work are ultimately ordinary citizens, most of whom will never know this work took place on their behalf.

That is the consideration I return to most often when thinking about why MEACA matters.

There is also a dimension of this profession’s own narrative that I believe deserves more attention. For decades, the governing frameworks originated elsewhere— London, Washington, Brussels —and were applied to this region regardless of whether they were fully suited to it. Often useful, but developed for a different set of conditions. What I have observed, in watching practitioners here navigate regulatory uncertainty and cultural complexity under real resource constraints, is that genuine expertise has developed locally. That expertise deserves a broader platform than it has had. Part of MEACA’s ambition is to help provide that platform, not only bringing frameworks into the region, but exporting insight out of it.

We also devote considerable effort to helping global organizations operate here with confidence. The governance concerns often raised about parts of Africa are not unfounded, but they are not the complete picture, and they are rarely as insurmountable as they can appear from a distance. Local expertise changes what is possible for organizations entering these markets.

None of this progress would have been possible without early sponsors who supported the vision before there was much to demonstrate. Our institutional partners — the international law firm Covington & Burling, the global logistics and supply chain technology provider Descartes, and the compliance conference organizer Nielsen Smith — were instrumental in that respect. Their support has allowed us to keep membership accessible, which has mattered a great deal in parts of Africa where the need is significant but resources for professional membership are often constrained.

We are now entering a new phase. Through 2026, we have focused on strengthening the organization’s foundation to build an institution meant to last. We have brought together an exceptional Advisory Board — Adam Turteltaub, Richard Bistrong, Benjamin Haley, and Alex Terry, chaired by Elvis Angyiembe — whose collective expertise and standing in the field have been instrumental in further solidifying MEACA’s mission.

Together with our Executive Management Board — Sidra Ghani, Stephan Lutz, Lolan Sagoe-Moses and Karina Griese-Brake — I work alongside a group of leaders who give their time on a pro bono basis because they believe in this mission. Their commitment underpins most of what MEACA has achieved to date, and most of what it is about to build.

The Middle East has already demonstrated what is possible. The UAE and Saudi Arabia, in particular, have made meaningful progress on governance and transparency over the past two decades, a trend reflected in indicators such as Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index. Africa’s trajectory is still being written. The challenges are well documented, but so is the opportunity — a young population, rapid development, and deepening global integration. What is required now is sustained discipline around ethics and governance as that story unfolds.

That is the role I see for MEACA: to keep the region connected, to elevate the professional conversation, and to ensure that those doing this work are not doing it alone.

On a personal level, I have worked across enough regions and industries to have seen both outcomes closely: the cost of weak governance and the value of strong systems. I have also experienced the isolation this profession can bring—the sense of being the only person in the room who fully understands what is at stake. MEACA is, in many respects, a response to that experience. But it is also an expression of a belief that integrity should not remain the burden of isolated individuals, but become a shared institutional and regional commitment.

We are now building the infrastructure to carry that commitment forward: a stronger membership platform, deeper institutional partnerships, a growing network of country representatives, and more opportunities for professionals across the Middle East and Africa to learn from one another, support one another, and shape the standards by which our regions develop.

The ambition is to help build a future in which integrity is understood not as an obstacle to growth, but as one of its essential conditions; where compliance professionals are not brought in only after something has gone wrong, but are trusted as architects of stronger organizations, markets, and institutions; and where the Middle East and Africa are not merely recipients of global governance standards, but increasingly help define them.

There is no shortage of talent, experience, or determination across these regions. What has too often been missing is connection: a structure capable of bringing that collective strength together and directing it toward a common purpose. That is what MEACA is becoming.

This journey remains at an early stage, but the direction is clear. Every professional connected, every institution strengthened, and every act of integrity protected contributes to something larger than our association. It contributes to economies that inspire confidence, institutions that earn trust, and societies in which opportunity is not diminished by corruption or weakened by the absence of accountability.

That is the future we believe is possible across the Middle East and Africa. And MEACA intends to help build it alongside the people already doing the work from within it.

You can find out more about MEACA by contacting me at tomell@me-aca.com