Regional workshop: Promoting e-procurement to mitigate corruption risks in Africa

Public procurement accounts for around 17% of GDP across Africa, and too much of it never reaches the people it is meant for. Most governments across the continent have started digitizing their procurement systems. Most have then gotten stuck, with pilots that go live and stall. The blockers range from political will, change management, to the hard lessons that only countries who have been through it can share.

Together with UNODC and Open Ownership, we are bringing together procurement agency heads, e-procurement project managers, and anti-corruption authorities from across Eastern and Southern Africa for a two-day workshop and a technical training day. The workshop builds on the UNODC guidelines on using technology to combat corruption in procurement agreed in Doha in December 2025.

Over three days, we will:

• Take stock of where reform is working and where it is stalling, drawing on country experiences from Tanzania, Rwanda, Zambia, and Italy’s ANAC
• Dig into the do’s and don’ts of e-procurement project management and change management
• Explore how open contracting data and beneficial ownership information can surface corruption risks before they take hold
• Hear from the private sector, including small businesses and women entrepreneurs, on what it takes to make public markets genuinely accessible
• Discuss what AI means for the future of e-procurement
• Agree a joint outcome document and close with a full-day technical training on the Open Contracting Data Standard for e-procurement managers

Read the research

• Report: Fulfilling the promise of e-procurement reforms in Africa – Eight lessons from five countries on what it takes to get e-procurement off the ground and keep it there: Ethiopia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Uganda, and Zambia.
• Case study: Transforming Africa’s procurement: locally owned, data-driven. A case study from Tanzania – How Tanzania built its own end-to-end procurement system from scratch, published over 371,000 tenders as open data in real time, and tripled supplier registrations in five districts through training for small businesses.

Speakers include

• Gloria Ngoma, Director General, Zambia Public Procurement Authority
• Benson Turamye, Director General, Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Assets Authority, Uganda
• Tumelo Motsumi, Director General, Public Procurement Regulatory Authority, Botswana
• Giuseppe Busia, President, National Anti-Corruption Authority (ANAC), Italy
• Dr Rajesh Shakya, Senior Procurement Specialist, World Bank
• Edwin Muhumuza, Head of Africa, Open Contracting Partnership
• Christine Wachira, Regional Manager for Africa, Open Ownership
• Gawesh Jawaheer, Senior Manager for Africa, Open Contracting Partnership