Author Archives: Geo Quinot

APLU is proud that Professor Annamaria la Chimia, professor in law and development at the School of Law at the University of Nottingham and a research fellow of APLU has been appointed as the new director of the Public Procurement Research Group (PPRG) at the University of Nottingham from 1 August 2020.

Prof La Chimia succeeds Prof Sue Arrowsmith QC (Hon), who established the PPRG more than 20 years ago in Nottingham. The PPRG is a global leader in research and teaching on public procurement regulation and APLU has enjoyed a close working relationship with the PPRG since its inception in 2012. This relationship was further formalised when Prof La Chimia was appointed as a research fellow with APLU under the auspices of the Department of Mercantile Law at Stellenbosch University in 2019.

Prof La Chimia read Law at the University of Rome La Sapienza, completed an LLM in International Economic Law (2002) and a PhD (2006) at the School of Law at University of Nottingham. She joined the School of Law at the University of Nottingham as a lecturer in 2006, was promoted to Associate Professor in 2014 and to Professor in 2019. She heads the Humanitarian and Development Procurement Unit and is co-leader of the Procurement and Human Rights Unit of the PPRG. She is a founding member of the European Association on Public Private Partnership (EAPPP), a member of the Transatlantic Food Assistance Dialogue (TAFAD) and until 2018 was member of the steering Committee of the Learning Lab on Procurement and Human Rights. Prof La Chimia is currently Co-Investigator for the Rising from the Depths project, a two-million pound project funded by the UK Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) through the Arts and Humanities Research Council Network Plus scheme, which focuses on utilising marine cultural heritage in East Africa to help develop sustainable social, economic and cultural benefits.

In February 2020, the South African National Treasury published a draft Public Procurement Bill for public comment. APLU submitted detailed comments, which can be viewed here. APLU’s African Public Procurement Law Journal also published a special edition focusing on the draft Bill, which can be accessed here.

An updated version of the Bibliography on Public Procurement Law and Regulation has been published by the Public Procurement Research Group (PPRG) at the University of Nottingham under the supervision of Prof Sue Arrowsmith QC (Hon). The update covers materials up to the end of 2018.

APLU has been a collaborator on the development and maintenance of the bibliography from its outset in 2011 and again worked closely with the PPRG to update the African section of the 2019 bibliography.

The bibliography aims to list in a comprehensive manner reading in the English language on public procurement law and regulation. As such, it provides an invaluable tool for the study of public procurement law and provides an excellent starting point for any research project in this field of law. The bibliography is freely available at the link above.

APLU’s Sope Williams-Elegbe is the Vice-Chair (Africa) of the Debarment and Exclusions Subcommittee (the Subcommittee) of the International Bar Association’s Anti- Corruption Committee.

In cooperation with the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank Group, and Le Bureau de l’inspecteur general de la Ville de Montréal, the Subcommittee is conducting research into national suspension & debarment systems. To launch the survey, the Subcommittee on 18 March 2020 presented a webinar titled “The Global Exclusion Survey: A Look at Suspension and Debarment Systems from around the World.” Sope was one of the panellists on the webinar, a recording of which can be found here.

The survey can be accessed here.

APLU’s Sope Williams-Elegbe brought a public procurement perspective to deliberations on blockchain in Africa at the Blockchain Africa 2020 conference. She presented on “Public Procurement, Corruption and Blockchain Technology: A Preliminary Inquiry” at the conference held in Sandton, Johannesburg on 12 March 2020. More information on the conference can be found here.