For the second year in a row, APLU assisted the South African National Research Foundation (NRF) to host an international conference on public procurement. The 2024 conference focused on specifications and methods in public procurement and was hosted on 4 and 5 September 2024 at the NRF Headquarters in Pretoria. For more information, click here.
Geo Quinot is trained in law, public administration and higher education. He is currently a Professor of Law in the Department of Public Law and the School of Public Leadership at Stellenbosch University, South Africa as well as Founding Director of the African Procurement Law Unit (APLU). He is also admitted as an Advocate of the High Court of South Africa. Quinot teaches administrative law and public procurement law in the Law Faculty and the School for Public Leadership at Stellenbosch University. He also regularly instructs public administrators in both administrative law and public procurement regulation. His research focuses on general administrative law, including a particular focus on the regulation of state commercial activity such as public procurement, insolvency of organs of state as well as on legal education.
Quinot has published widely in these areas. He is the author, co-author and/or editor of ten book publications, the most recent of which are Municipalities in Financial Distress: An Environmental, Social and Governance Critique to be published by Edward Elgar in 2025; Public Procurement Regulation in Africa: Development in Uncertain Times, published by LexisNexis in 2020 and Administrative Justice in South Africa: An Introduction, the second edition of which was published by Oxford University Press in 2020. Quinot is a past editor-in-chief of the journal, Stellenbosch Law Review and the founding editor-in-chief of the open-access journal, African Public Procurement Law Journal. As an advocate, Quinot advises on matters relating to administrative law and especially public procurement law to both public buyers (organs of state) and suppliers to the state.
Quinot obtained the degrees BA(Law) and LLB, both cum laude, at Stellenbosch University; LLM (Master of Laws) at the University of Virginia School of Law in the USA as a Fulbright scholar; MA (Master of Arts in Higher Education Studies) cum laude at the University of the Free State; MPA (Master in Public Administration) cum laude from the University of Birmingham in the UK and LLD (Doctor of Laws) at Stellenbosch University.
A selection of relevant publications
Books
Chapters in books
Journal articles
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On 24 to 25 July 2024, APLU convened a national workshop on public procurement reform in South Africa.
The aim of the workshop was to bring together all stakeholders to discuss current developments in public procurement reform in South Africa. The workshop is a continuation of a project started in 2023, broadly aimed at collective reflection on what public procurement system the procurement community wants and needs in South Africa and how all stakeholders can collaborate to get there.
The 2024 workshop was opened by Chief Justice Raymond Zondo, in which he reminded delegates that public procurement was at the heart of state capture as identified by the State Capture Commission which he chaired. He thus emphasised the importance of the aims of the workshop in pursuit of a reformed public procurement system in South Africa. The Chief Justice called on all delegates to carefully scrutinise current reform projects, such as the new Public Procurement Act and regulations to be made under the Act, to ensure that the weaknesses that enabled state capture through public procurement are effectively addressed.
The presentations by the various speakers can be viewed at the link below and recordings of the live stream are available on APLU’s YouTube channel.
This project is funded by the Millennium Trust.
On 17 to 18 June 2024, the Public Procurement Research Group at the University of Nottingham hosted its biennial international conference on public procurement law. The 2024 conference again gathered scholars from multiple disciplines around the world to discuss current research and developments in the field of public procurement.
APLU was again one of the collaborating partners for the conference and contributed to several sessions. Prof Geo Quinot delivered a plenary keynote that focused on reconceptualising public procurement (law and practice) globally. Prof Sope Williams shared insights from her most recent research addressing the corruption barriers to gender responsive procurement in a session that focused on diversity in procurement. Prof Quinot also joined Prof François Lichère of the Université Jean Moulin Lyon and Director of the Chair of Public Contract Law (Chaire de droit des contrats publics), Prof Christopher Yukins of the George Washington University School of Law and Prof Tünde Tátrai of the Corvinus University of Budapest on a panel that discussed deference to contracting authority decisions in procurement disputes.
APLU Deputy Director, Dr Allison Anthony, graduated on 19 May 2024 from the prestigious LLM in Government Procurement Law from George Washington University School of Law in Washington DC in the United States. This programme is the oldest dedicated degree programme focusing specifically on public procurement law. APLU and the Government Procurement Law Program at GWU have a long-standing close relationship of collaboration in the field of public procurement law. With Dr Anthony now an alumni of both entities, these bonds will inevitably continue to grow stronger.
A new publication, the Routledge Handbook of Public Procurement Corruption, edited by APLU Deputy Director, Prof Sope Williams, and GWU’s Prof Jessica Tillipman, was published in April 2024 providing a go-to reference for all who are interested in public procurement and countering corruption. This major work, with 33 chapters covering both thematic issues in public procurement corruption and country studies from around the globe provides one of the most comprehensive treatments of addressing corruption in public procurement.
Apart from Prof Williams, who contributed chapters on an overview of corruption and public procurement and on the position in Nigeria, other APLU researchers also contributed to the volume, with APLU Director, Prof Geo Quinot, authoring a chapter on corruption in COVID-19 procurement and APLU fellow, Prof George Nwangwu, writing on corruption in public–private partnership procurement. A number of African countries are also included among the country case studies in part III of the book.
More details can be found on the publisher’s website.
On 29 February 2024, APLU Director, Prof Geo Quinot, delivered the keynote address at the opening ceremony of the 12th edition of the International Master in Public Procurement Management (IMPPM) at the School of Economics, University of Tor Vergata, Rome.
The IMPPM is an innovative, multidisciplinary advanced degree programme in public procurement supported by several multilateral development banks such as the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, African Development Bank, and The Caribbean Development Bank.
Prof Quinot’s lecture focused on a shift in the animating feature of public procurement globally.
The African Procurement Law Unit organized two high-level engagements on behalf of the National Research Foundation of South Africa (NRF) to explore the linkage between public procurement and innovation in Africa. At a one-day colloquium (pictured above) followed by a two-day conference, held between 13 and 15 November at the NRF campus in Pretoria, leading international scholars engaged with local policymakers, practitioners and scholars in both the areas of public procurement and innovation to explore ways in which public spending can be leveraged to accelerate innovation on the continent.
Opening the conference, Mr. Imraan Patel (left), deputy director general for research development and support in the Department of Science and Innovation, noted the need to use the opportunity that the state’s enormous spend on public procurement presents to build our innovation ecosystem.
The South African government spends close to R1 trillion annually through public procurement. Scholars from multiple disciplines explored issues such as public procurement as an innovation policy tool, the transformation potential of public procurement for/of innovation, the state of current supply chains, mapping firm innovation patterns in South Africa, the role of technology in procurement of innovation, pursuing functional and relational public procurement paradigms, innovation for gender-responsive procurement, defense procurement as a driver of innovation and public procurement in open innovation approaches. Best practices across the world were considered in building an appreciation of a fit-for-purpose approach to linking public procurement and innovation in Africa.
All presentations at the conference van be viewed on the NRF YouTube channel.
