Category Archives: Seminars & symposia

On 16 April 2026, the South African National Treasury published draft regulations under the Public Procurement Act 2024 for public comment (see at this link). Once promulgated, these regulations will enable the Act to commence.

Two sets of regulations were published, the draft Public Procurement Tribunal Regulations, 2026 and the draft General Public Procurement Regulations, 2026. In combination, these sets of regulations constitute a comprehensive set of rules to govern public procurement in South Africa in future. Public comments on the draft Tribunal regulations are due by 15 May and on the draft General regulations by 15 June.

APLU in partnership with Shaun Scott of Public Procurement Innovation Research (PPiR) is hosting a series of webinars on the Public Sector SCM Collaboration Platform to unpack the draft Regulations. The aim is to generate debate around the draft regulations and facilitate meaningful submissions. The series starts on 29 April at 10am (CAT) and continues until 10 June. Anyone is welcome to register at the link below.

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.

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.

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.

The second workshop in APLU’s project to facilitate a national conversation on procurement reform in South Africa took place at the Birchwood Hotel & OR Tambo Conference Centre on 21 July 2023. Like the first workshop in February 2023, this second workshop brought together a large range of stakeholders in South African public procurement, including public procurement practitioners, academics, representatives of government suppliers, and policy-makers.

The second workshop focused specifically on the Public Procurement Bill B18-2023 that was tabled in the South African Parliament on 30 June 2023. The Bill proposes to consolidate all procurement regulation under a single regulatory regime and introduce significant reform to the procurement system in South Africa.

Delegates deliberated on a range of topics under the Bill, organised under five core themes:

The African Procurement Law Unit (APLU) initiated a national conversation on public procurement reform in South Africa during a two-day gathering in Johannesburg from 27 to 28 February 2023.

The initiative is a response to the call of the Zondo Commission of Inquiry into State Capture which noted that “any serious attempt to address the problems which beset public procurement must go well beyond state capture … the process of reform requires a coherent and comprehensive plan of action which needs to bring the public and private sectors together in a joint initiative to restore proper standards and discipline within the procurement system.”

The event drew over 120 delegates from the South African public procurement/supply chain management community to discuss all aspects of public procurement with the aim of framing a vision for the future of public procurement in South Africa. Delegates came from all levels of government, including key national departments such as Treasury; Justice and Constitutional Development; Public Works and Infrastructure; Trade, Industry and Competition and Defence as well as from public bodies such as the NRF; Public Service Commission; SARS; Competition Commission and SANRAL. Suppliers to the government as well as supplier organisations such as Consulting Engineers South Africa and the Steel and Engineering Industries Federation of Southern Africa were present. Participating NGOs included Corruption Watch; the Legal Resources Centre; Amabhungane; Open Ownership, OUTA and the Public Service Accountability Monitor as well as some of South Africa’s leading procurement academics and lawyers.

The topics discussed ranged from the forthcoming public procurement legislation for South Africa, how best to deal with the restriction of poor performing and corrupt suppliers to government, the liability of public officials for procurement failures, the need for the state to buy local goods in order to support local industrial development, how to accelerate transformation via public procurement practices, increased use of technology to improve efficiencies in procurement and to reduce abuse and how best to deal with challenges to tender awards.

Prof Geo Quinot, APLU director and professor of law at SU, noted in his opening remarks that “public procurement is the backbone of service delivery in our country, of making real the aspirations of our constitution, of driving economic development. By coming together, all of us can strengthen that backbone to the benefit of everyone who live in our country.” Click here to listen to the full opening remarks.

The issues raised during the plenary engagements were categorised under five themes and discussed in more detail by smaller working groups. The themes are institutional arrangements; procurement integrity; targeted procurement; procedures & efficiency; and dispute resolution. The South African public procurement community intends to contribute to the ongoing reforms of the public procurement system and following the two-day workshop, the national conversation continues by way of workstreams where delegates will continue to explore the themes raised in the working groups.  For each theme, an issue paper will be collaboratively developed to set out inter alia the nature of the issue, its role in the procurement system, possible ways in which it could be regulated, suggested operating procedures and standard documents, and the skills required to manage the issue. The issue papers will include case studies, from South Africa and beyond, on how the issue has been successfully addressed. These issue papers will be discussed at further gatherings, including another national workshop in June. The outcomes can feed into the public consultation processes that will accompany new procurement legislation, and the crafting of regulations and other implementation instruments under a new procurement statute, once passed. Generally, the initiative aims to assist all stakeholders in improving procurement practice – from the regulators tasked with designing and overseeing the procurement system; to the leadership of organs of state in using procurement as a strategic tool; to procurement officials in their daily acquisition functions; to businesses wanting to supply goods and services to the state.

The South African procurement community believes that by bringing together the experiences of officials awarding tenders, of enterprises selling to the state, of regulators monitoring the spending of public money, of NGOs focusing on the impact of procurement on civil society and of academics researching and training on all aspects of public procurement, the South African society can collaboratively construct a fit-for-purpose procurement system that can deliver best value for money. 

​Listen to the closing remarks by Prof Quinot at the end of the first workshop at this link.

UNCITRAL Days are a series of events co-organised with institutions of higher learning to raise awareness of the work of UNCITRAL amongst the next generations of legal thinkers and policymakers, thereby furthering its efforts to promote the progressive harmonization and modernization of international trade and commercial law.

The theme of the 2022 UNCITRAL Days in Africa was “Modernization and harmonization of international commercial law framework in the AfCFTA context”.

On 3 November 2022 from 9:00 – 12:30 (UTC+2), the African Procurement Law Unit at Stellenbosch University co-hosted with UNCITRAL an UNCITRAL Africa Day workshop focusing on the public procurement dimension of trade law harmonization in the AfCFTA context.

For more details, including recordings of the presentations, click on the following link.

Despite vast progress in the field of women’s rights, women still experience extreme discrimination in the form of gender pay gaps in workplaces, gender-based violence and harassment and time poverty due to unpaid domestic work. Women in rural areas travel long distances to access fuel and water, they suffer from air pollution caused by heating for the purpose of cooking and cleaning and are in danger based on a lack of lighting at public transport areas and outside public bathrooms. The latter indicates that infrastructure in South Africa does not adequately provide for the needs for women.

Public infrastructure is acquired by way of public procurement, which constitutes approximately 22% of a country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). With infrastructure being the bedrock of any country, the procurement of infrastructure holds tremendous economic significance. For the last two to three
decades, procurement has been leveraged to advance many social objectives, including the advancement of women-owned businesses. However, this topic in particular has seen slow development the world over.

This seminar will be based on an upcoming collaborative paper between the academy and practice in the form of UNISA, George Washington University International and Comparative Law Studies and International Budget Partnership South Africa where solutions to advancing women’s rights in infrastructure procurement will be considered. Sanitation access in South Africa’s informal
settlements will be explored as a case for gender-inclusive procurement.