REENGINEERING CONTEMPORARY ACCOUNTING THOUGHT AND PRACTICE: THE TRANSFORMATIVE ROLE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN FINANCIAL ACCOUNTING

Abstract

Accounting practice has always evolved slowly. For most of its history, the core work of the profession (recording transactions, summarizing them, and preparing financial statements as a fulfillment of the stewardship/agency function) has followed the same basic routine. The tools have however changed over time, from quill and ledger to spreadsheet and specialized software. While the underlying logic of the work has however stayed the same. Artificial intelligence, together with machine learning, large-scale data analytics and cloud infrastructure are changing not just what accountants do, but how they think about what they do. This paper draws on recent systematic reviews, bibliometric studies and empirical work to make two connected arguments. The first is that AI is reshaping accounting thought, pulling the profession away from a backward-looking, compliance-first mindset toward a more predictive and strategic engagement. The second is that AI is reshaping accounting practice, automating routine work, increasing the accuracy of financial reporting, and giving fraud detection a reach that traditional sampling-based methods never had. To help organisations understand where they stand in this tectonic shift, we propose a four-tier AI maturity model for financial accounting. Attention is given to the African context, with evidence drawn from Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya and Ghana, where adoption is real but uneven, and where the constraints (infrastructure gaps, skills shortages, cost, and thin regulation) are just as instructive as the successes.  The paper closes by arguing that the profession's task is not simply to adopt new tools, but to hold on to its founding commitments of trust, integrity and professional judgement while doing so.