An Insight into Procurement Standard Practices in Africa

Abstract

Effective procurement practices in Africa add value and lead to successful projects. This exploratory research is based on a survey of 415 procurement professionals in East Africa. The results suggest that factors that predict well projects success include national procurement policy, capacity of procurement units, updated procurement plans, and open competitive bidding. Procurement laws and national procurement regulatory bodies have negative impact on projects success while national procurement policy had positive impact. Moreover, the most important predictors of procurement professionalism were regular staff training, procurement certification, and procurement professional opinion. Policy implications include continuing enhancement of procurement policy reforms and focused in training procurement planning and contract management.

Keywords: Procurement, planning, policy, professionalism, Africa.