Innovating Compliance in the Middle East and Africa with Tomell Ceasar

Tomell Ceasar is the Group Head of Ethics and Compliance at Careem (An Uber Company). He is one of the founders of the Middle East and Africa Compliance Association (MEACA). This organization strives to raise awareness on business ethics and provides tools to build stronger and more responsible businesses. Essentially, they promote global regulatory compliance and effective governance in the Middle East and Africa. In this week’s episode, he explains to Tom the intricacies of practicing compliance outside the US, specifically the EAME. 

Compliance Practice in the EAME

Tom asks Tomell to describe what it is like practicing compliance in EAME. Tomell responds that it's difficult to make broad generalizations on compliance region-wide since the EAME is such a huge territory. Compliance is a “Western value in terms of the way one approaches international business”, Tomell remarks, so adoption would take some time. However, appreciation of compliance roles and professionals grew exponentially over the past decade. International companies are seeing compliance through the US lens, and “they identified values of compliance being important enough to them to adopt similar frameworks and ideological perspectives as it relates to commercial enterprise, to be equivalent to the United States,” Tomell remarks.

The Birth of the MEACA 

As a co-founder of the Middle East and Africa Compliance Association, Tom wants to know how Tomell came up with the idea for the MEACA. Tomell explains that “the values of compliance have traditionally not been a staple of commercial enterprises in these regions.” Compliance has had a real maturation process over the last 10 years, and Tomell and his team saw a major opportunity to support the development and growth towards that end. There was a need for an organization willing to serve the distinct purpose of “serving and supporting the compliance community and to give them an avenue to connect, to network, to broaden their skill set.” Thus, the MEACA was born. To this day, they help companies promote and catalyze the compliance movement toward fighting corruption in companies and society. 

Resources 

Tomell Ceasar | LinkedIn

The Middle East and Africa Compliance Association