In April 2024, Sandton hosted one of the most anticipated evenings in South African professional services — the Xero Awards South Africa. The room brought together the country's leading accounting firms, fintech innovators, and practice owners for a night of recognition and reflection. Among the distinguished attendees was Awonke Dyantyi, founder of Dyantyi Chartered and ForbesBLK member.

But for Awonke, the 2024 Xero Awards Gala dinner was not the beginning of the story. It was the latest chapter in a relationship with Xero that started years earlier — and moved faster than anyone expected.

Silver Partner in her first month

When Awonke Dyantyi first signed up to Xero, the platform recognised her almost immediately. Within her first month of joining, she was awarded Xero Silver Partner status — a designation that typically takes firms considerably longer to earn. It was an early signal of what was becoming clear: that Dyantyi Chartered was not an ordinary firm, and that Awonke was not an ordinary practitioner.

Silver Partner status reflects a firm's commitment to the Xero platform, the number of clients it manages through Xero, and the quality of service it delivers. Earning it in month one placed Dyantyi Chartered in rare company — and put Awonke on Xero's radar from the start.

First social media winner at the Xero Roadshow, Johannesburg

The recognition did not stop there. At the Xero Roadshow in Johannesburg, Awonke was announced as the first-ever social media winner — a new category recognising a practitioner who had built genuine visibility and community engagement around Xero and cloud accounting in South Africa.

For a Black female-owned firm from Cape Town to win a social media award at a Johannesburg roadshow was not incidental. It reflected something Awonke had been building deliberately: a public presence that made accounting accessible, relatable, and visible to the founders, entrepreneurs, and communities that traditional accounting had never spoken to directly.

The accounting profession is not just changing in what it does. It is changing in who it belongs to. That is what evenings like this confirm.

— Awonke Dyantyi, Xero Awards Sandton, 2024

VIP tickets to the Rugby Sevens World Cup, Cape Town — 2022

In 2022, Xero awarded Awonke and her team VIP tickets to the Rugby Sevens World Cup in Cape Town — one of the most celebrated sporting events on the South African calendar. It was a moment of recognition that went beyond the professional. Xero was not just acknowledging a partner. It was investing in her and her team as people — celebrating the human beings behind the firm, not just the metrics.

For a team of professionals who had built their practice from the ground up, the gesture landed as exactly what it was: a statement that Dyantyi Chartered belonged in the rooms, at the events, and on the stages where the profession's best gather.

The 2024 Xero Awards Gala Dinner, Sandton

The 2024 Xero Awards in Sandton were the culmination of a relationship built over years of excellence, visibility, and partnership. The gala brought together the finest accounting practices in South Africa — firms recognised for innovation, client service, team development, and community impact.

Awonke's presence at that table, as a ForbesBLK member, Xero Silver Partner, first-ever Xero social media winner, and founder of one of the most recognised Black female-owned firms in South Africa, was a statement the profession could not ignore. The faces in those rooms are changing. Black women who built firms from the ground up — without institutional backing or inherited networks — are now seated at the industry's most prestigious tables.

To every firm and individual recognised at the Sandton ceremony: your commitment to excellence raises the standard for the entire profession. This is how the industry grows.

Why Xero matters to South African businesses

Xero is one of the most widely used cloud accounting platforms among South African small and medium businesses. For accounting firms, Xero Partner status signals a commitment to modern, tech-enabled practice — giving clients real-time financial visibility and positioning firms to deliver strategic value, not just compliance.

For Dyantyi Chartered, the Xero relationship reflects a broader philosophy: that technology should make compliance and financial management more accessible, not more complicated — for freelancers, founders, NGOs, and international investors entering the South African market alike.

Awonke Dyantyi and Xero — The Journey

View the full 2024 Xero Awards South Africa results xero.com/za

Need help with tax, compliance, or financial reporting? Contact Dyantyi Chartered — we work with founders, NGOs, and international businesses across South Africa.

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