Public Procurement in Africa

The PPRG has recently launched a research and capacity-building project on public procurement in Africa, supported by an award of £29,762 from the British Academy (Principal Investigator - Sue Arrowsmith). The project will be undertaken in collaboration with Professor Geo Quinot and Professor Phoebe Bolton of the University of the Stellenbosch, South Africa, who will also work with Sope Williams and Dr Annamaria La Chimia of the PPRG at Nottingham.

The three-year project will examine the current state of procurement regulation in Southern Africa by reference to key themes in which regulation can play an important role. These will include: procurement methods; use of procurement to promote socio-economic objectives; supplier complaint (remedy) systems; use of regulatory techniques to address corruption; impact of development aid on procurement regulation and policy; and issues affecting participation in trade agreements (including the impact of tied aid). The project will consider by way of case studies several different national regimes in Southern Africa, embracing countries in differing stages of the reform process and with different legal traditions (common law and civil law).

It is intended that the project will provide information and awareness of issues facing Africa in the public procurement field both for scholars and policy makers.

The project will also lay the foundations for future joint research between the partner institutions and create the capacity for African scholars to develop research and teaching capacity in the field. In these latter respects the project will build on the work in developing public procurement regulation as a university-level subject under the PPRG's European-Commission funded Asia Link project.

News

The website for the PPRG's British Academy funded project on public procurement in Africa, which is being undertaken with the Universities of Stellenbosch and the Western Cape in South Africa, has now been launched. The website will provide up to date information on the progress of the project and also includes a bibliography of works on Africa public procurement.

The website can be found under the research menu of the Stellenbosch Law Faculty website.

Events

In February 2009, Dr Geo Quinot and Professor Phoebe Bolton visited The University of Nottingham in order to meet with their PPRG collaborators on the African Procurement project.

During their visit, they attended the 20 February Asia Link workshop on the supervision of PhD students as well as the 23 February workshop on legal research methods in public procurement, hosted by Dr Ezra Hasson and Professor Francois du Bois of The University of Nottingham's School of Law.