APLU’s Sope Williams-Elegbe presented on “Public Procurement, Corruption and Blockchain Technology: A Preliminary Inquiry” at the Blockchain Africa 2020 Conference, Sandton, Johannesburg, 12 March 2020. More details on the conference can be found here.
Author Archives: Geo Quinot
Draft South African Public Procurement Bill published for comment
The long-awaited South African draft Public Procurement Bill was published for public comment on 19 February 2020. One of the main aims of the draft statute is “to create a single regulatory framework for public procurement and eliminate fragmentation in laws which deal with procurement in the public sector”. The draft Bill proposes a range of reforms to the South African procurement system, including
- the creation of a Public Procurement Regulator,
- repealing the Preferential Procurement Policy Framework Act and with it the entire current approach to preferential procurement, replacing it with a new, broad preferential procurement framework to be determined by the Minister of Finance by way of regulation,
- introducing a new remedies regime that includes reconsideration at entity level, provincial level and national level, with a standstill period, and a new Public Procurement Tribunal, which will have to be approached for review of procurement decisions prior to instituting judicial review applications
- explicitly regulating infrastructure procurement and PPPs, and
- replacing the current local government procurement rules (the Bill proposes repealing the entire chapter 11 of the MFMA).
Comments are open until 30 June 2020.
Details on the draft Bill can be found on the website of National Treasury.
Williams-Elegbe presents on SPP at SA Law Teachers conference
On 22 January 2020, Sope Williams-Elegbe presented on the subject of “Public Procurement and Sustainable Development: A South African Perspective” at the Southern Africa Law Teachers Conference, the gathering of all law teachers in Southern Africa, held in Skukuza, Kruger National Park.
Fourth International Conference on Public Procurement Law Africa 2021
CALL FOR PAPERS
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON
PUBLIC PROCUREMENT LAW AFRICA
The African Procurement Law Unit (APLU), Faculty of Law, Stellenbosch University, is pleased to announce the Call for Abstracts for the fourth International Conference on Public Procurement Law Africa. The Conference will be held on 11 to 12 August 2021 in Cape Town, South Africa.
Conference Theme
The Conference theme is Public Procurement and the Sustainable Development Goals in Africa: A Decade of Opportunity. The theme will address a range of critically important legal and policy issues relating to sustainable development and sustainable public procurement in Africa, in the ten year deadline to achieving the SDGs by 2030. The conference will examine the role of public procurement to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals; using public procurement to address the climate emergency in Africa, the integration between procurement and human rights issues such as modern slavery, as well as issues that present an obstacle to sustainable development such as corruption, weak institutional capacity and poor governance in the procurement context – all from a regulatory perspective. The conference will also consider the role that innovation and technology such as blockchain and AI can play in sustainable public procurement and regulatory issues pertaining to such innovation. Plenary speakers include some of the leading thinkers in public procurement in Africa and internationally, and the conference will feature numerous papers, and workshops presentations. We are inviting abstracts for paper presentations addressing the broad conference theme in any of these particular areas:
| Sub-themes | |
| 1 | Using public procurement to address the climate emergency |
| 2 | Public procurement and human rights |
| 3 | Sustainable development and public procurement in Africa |
| 4 | Corruption, fraud and public procurement in Africa |
| 5 | Sustainable public procurement in Africa |
| 6 | Technology and sustainable public procurement |
| 7 | Innovation and public procurement in Africa |
| 8 | Health procurement and sustainable development |
| 9 | Emergency procurement and pandemics |
Note that abstract ideas that extend beyond these thematic areas but which are within the broad conference focus will also be considered.
Submit a Conference Abstract
Abstracts for the conference should be emailed to aplu@sun.ac.za and should be no more than 300 words. The deadline for submission is 30th April 2021. Authors of accepted abstracts will be notified by 30th May 2021. Full conference papers (of no more than 10,000 words, including footnotes) and presentation slides (no more than 12 slides) should be submitted by 1st August 2021, for distribution to delegates. Please note that late abstract submissions will not be considered.
The best papers will either be published in an edited book collection (to be confirmed), or in the African Public Procurement Law Journal.
Important dates
| Event | Date |
| Abstract submission opens | 10th December 2019 |
| Abstract submission deadline | 30th April 2021 |
| Acceptance Notification | 30th May 2021 |
| Full paper submission deadline | 1st August 2021 |
Conference Details
To learn more about the conference, including speakers, session formats, venue, registration please visit www.africanprocurementlaw.org.
Inquiries should be directed to the organizers at aplu@sun.ac.za
Please note that the conference is an academic conference and we are unable to fund speaker’s participation.
Prof Geo Quinot & Prof Sope Williams-Elegbe
Conference directors
APLU completes four-year training programme for the Office of the Public Protector
Participants of the Public Protector’s Mpumalanga office.
APLU completed its four-year collaboration in 2019 with the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung and the Office of the Public Protector of South Africa in training investigators of the Public Protector’s office in public procurement law. From 15 to 19 July 2019, Prof Geo Quinot and Prof Sope Williams-Elegbe travelled to Mbombela to conduct an intensive one-week training programme with investigators in the Public Protector’s Mpumalanga office. This was followed by the final session of the programme from 4 to 8 November in Polokwane where training was offered to the Limpopo offices. These were the 8th and 9th provincial offices to be targeted in this programme, which started in 2016 when the original programme was piloted at the Public Protector’s head office in Pretoria. The conclusion of this four-year project resulted in all investigators of the Public Protector’s Office having received intensive training in public procurement law.
Participants from the Public Protector’s Limpopo offices
APLU well-represented at Global Revolutions IX
APLU collaborated again with the PPRG of the University of Nottingham to support the leading international conference on public procurement law, Public Procurement: Global Revolutions IX, hosted by the PPRG in Nottingham. The 2019 conference – the 9th in the series – took place from June 17-18 2019 at the East Midlands Conference Centre, University of Nottingham, UK.
Various APLU researchers presented papers and chaired workshops at the two-day conference. These included:
- Dr Allison Anthony “The promotion of human rights through public procurement in South African law”
- Dr George Nwangwu “A Comparative Analysis of the Use of Unsolicited Proposal for the Delivery of PPP Projects in Africa”
- Prof Geo Quinot “Conceptualising sustainable public procurement in the Global South – distinct from the North?”
- Prof Dominic Dagbanja “Developments in sustainable public procurement policy and law in Ghana and Australia”
- Prof Sope Williams-Elegbe “Procurement, corruption and blockchain technology”
as well as former APLU LLM student, Songezo Mabece, who was awarded one of three bursaries to participate in the conference and presented a paper on “Building Institutional Relationships in the Development and Regulation of Public Procurement in South Africa”
At the conference the new book publication Public Procurement and Aid Effectiveness: A Roadmap under Construction, co-edited by APLU research fellow, Prof Annamaria la Chimia and published by Hart Publishing was also launched with a panel discussion on what the future holds for procurement and aid effectiveness on which both Prof La Chimia and Prof Williams-Elegbe of APLU participated.
Procurement Day 2019: Focusing on PPPs
APLU’s annual Procurement Day took place on 7 May 2019 and was well-attended by a mix of researchers, practitioners and officials, interested in public procurement.
The speakers were:
- Prof Cao Fuguo
- Professor of Law, Central University of Finance and Economics School of Law in Beijing, China, Director of the China Institute for Public Procurement Studies
- Dr George Nwangwu
- Associate Director and Head of Legal and Project Finance for Africa PPP Advisory Services Limited, Nigeria and author of Public Private Partnerships in Nigeria
- Dr Allison Anthony
- Senior lecturer, UNISA College of Law, Deputy Director: APLU
- Prof Geo Quinot
- Professor of Law, Stellenbosch University Faculty of Law, Director: APLU
with APLU’s Prof Sope Williams-Elegbe moderating the discussion.
Speakers at the 2019 APLU Procurement Day (from left): Prof Geo Quinot, Prof Cao Fuguo, Dr Allison Anthony, Prof Sope Williams-Elegbe and Dr George Ngwangwu
The focus of the seminar was the legal regulation of public-private partnerships (PPPs). The speakers discussed a range of issues relating to the regulationof PPPs from both a South African and international perspectives. Prof Fuguo and Dr Nwangwu shared experiences from China and Nigeria in the regulation of PPPs respectively, while Dr Anthony looked at the regulation of PPPs in the context of infrastructure development in South Africa and Prof Quinot discussed the regulation of unsolicited bids as a commonly-used mechanism in PPP procurement, including in South Africa.
Dr Peter Volmink
Dr Peter Volmink holds the degrees BA LLB (UCT), LLM in Administrative Law (Duke University) and PhD in public procurement law (Wits Law School). After practicing at the Cape Bar for a period of time, Peter joined the National Prosecuting Authority as Regional Head of the Asset Forfeiture Unit. Thereafter, he was appointed as General Manager: Legal in Transnet, and became Executive Manager in Supply Chain in Transnet until he left Transnet to rejoin the bar as a fulltime practicing advocate in 2020. He is the founding chairperson of the Administrative Justice Association of South Africa Special Interest Group on Public Procurement, an adjunct professor at the Wits School of Law and a research fellow in the Department of Mercantile Law at Stellenbosch University. Peter has published widely in the area of public procurement law.
Prof George Nwangwu
Prof George Nwangwu has over two decades of experience spanning academia, legal practice and consultancy services in Nigeria and the United Kingdom. He was a lecturer in the Department of Commercial Law, University of Lagos Nigeria and the University of London (external program). As an international consultant to multilateral institutions, he has been involved with issues in the fields of infrastructure/utilities regulation, infrastructure finance, Project management and Public Private Partnerships (PPPs). Prof Nwangwu was a DFID/World Bank funded consultant with the Bureau of Public Enterprises where he held the following posts: Environmental Legal Adviser, Infrastructure Legal Adviser, Special Assistant to the Director General of the BPE and finally Head of the Strategy and Multilateral Relations Department.
Prof Nwangwu has also served as PPP Coordinator and Head of the PPP Division, Federal Ministry of Finance, Nigeria and was also a special adviser to the Hon. Minister of Finance on infrastructure finance and PPPs. Prof Nwangwu has published widely in the field of public private partnerships, with specific focus on regulatory issues. He is the author of the pioneering book, Public Private Partnerships in Nigeria: Managing Risks and Identifying Opportunities, published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2016.
In 2023, Prof Nwangwu was appointed as an extraordinary professor in the Department of Public Law at Stellenbosch University.
Prof Annamaria La Chimia
Prof Annamaria La Chimia LLB (La Sapienza, Rome) LLM and PhD (Nottingham) is Professor and Director of the Public Public Research Group at the University of Nottingham. Annamaria co-leads the University’s Rights and Justice Research Priority Area and is the School’s Equality Officer and Chair of the Equality and Diversity Committee. She is the Director of the Humanitarian and Development Procurement Unit and of the Procurement and Human Rights Unit within the Public Procurement Research Group. Her research has been funded by prestigious UK Research Councils (including the BA, BA-Leverhulme, AHRC). She has taught at a range of Universities and has acted as expert advisor in the field of procurement for numerous international organizations. She has published extensively in the area of aid effectiveness, development aid procurement and procurement by multilateral and bilateral aid donors. Her work has featured in International and European law reviews and in international edited collections. She is the author of Tied aid and Development Aid Procurement in the framework of EU and WTO Law: the imperative for Change, published by Hart Publishing in 2013, the leading monograph on this topic.