APLU has collaborated with the South African National Research Foundation (NRF) since 2023 to host an annual international conference on public procurement, bringing local and international scholars and practitioners in public procurement together to deliberate on specific aspects of public procurement.
2024 Conference: Procurement specifications and methods
The 2024 NRF International Conference on Public Procurement focused on public procurement specifications and methods. APLU joined forces with WillPower@Wil to organise the 2024 event, which comprised smaller round-table workshops on 3 and 6 September and a large hybrid conference on 4 and 5 September. The conference was held at the NRF Headquarters in Pretoria with between 400 and 450 participants joining either in person or online.
International speakers included
- Prof Tünde Tátrai, Professor of Economics at Corvinus University of Budapest, Institute of Business Economics, Hungary;
- Prof Christopher R Yukins, Lynn David Research Professor in Government Procurement Law at the George Washington University Law School, George Washington University, USA;
- Prof Gian Luigi Albano, Adjunct Professor of Economics, University LUISS G. Carli, Italy & Research Fellow, Utrecht University Centre for Public Procurement, The Netherlands;
- Dr Dolores Kuchina-Musina, Chief Disruptor and the founder of REXOTA Solutions, LLC;
- Ms René King; Senior Engineer at Project Performance International, Melbourne Australia;
- Prof George Nwangwu, Extraordinary Professor, Department of Public Law, Stellenbosch University; Professor of Law, Nile University of Nigeria & Director General of the Global Centre for Law and Business, Abuja, Nigeria; and
- Prof Benjamin V Rosa, Assistant Professor, Business Economics and Public Policy, Stephen M. Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, USA
- Prof Andrea Patrucco, Florida International University College of Business, USA
- Prof Ana Maria Dimand, Askew School of Public Administration and Policy, Florida State University, USA
More information on the 2024 conference can be found on the NRF website.
2023 Conference: Procurement and Innovation in Africa
The inaugural 2023 NRF International Conference on Public Procurement focused on procurement and innovation. The conference was held on 14 and 15 November 2023 at the NRF Headquarters in Pretoria.
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.
More details on the 2023 conference can be found on the NRF website.