Reduce chronic wastefulness, promote industrial development, and convert public budgets into tangible national assets.

By Professor Douglas BOATENG

Chartered Director | Industrialisation and Supply Chain Management Advocate | Governance Strategist

AWAKEN THE SLEEPING GIANT

Procurement, especially its strategic sourcing components, acts as the subtle force that turns policy into real results. In many emerging economies, it is still viewed as a matter of forms, tenders, and clearance stamps rather than a strategic and stewardship issue. Yet it controls a large portion of government expenditure and a significant part of national income. When procurement functions effectively, budgets become the foundations for hospitals, schools, and factories. When it fails, budgets become headlines and sources of disappointment. The harsh truth is that the difference is not luck; it is professionalism. Across the developing world, hundreds of thousands of people are involved daily in public and corporate purchasing. The uncomfortable reality is that most are not professionally licensed. Scale without standards converts avoidable waste into a routine cost of doing business.

THE ARITHMETIC OF BUYING POWER
Buying is never neutral. Every contract either deepens dependence or builds capability. Countries that sell raw materials for little and import finished goods for much do not only lose money. They surrender skills, jobs, and bargaining power. Exchange rates tell the story with no sympathy. A nation that buys what it could competitively make exports its future one container at a time. Citizens recognise the symptoms. Roads that fail after a rainy season. Hospitals with machines that no one is trained to operate. Textbooks are ordered at high prices while schools still lack desks. If history had a sense of humour, procurement malpractice would be a favourite sketch. The laughter stops when households pay the bill.

A PROFESSION, NOT A SIDE ROOM
Doctors need licenses. Engineers sit for exams. Accountants are regulated. Codes bind lawyers. Procurement directs vast sums and shapes future capacity, yet short-term appointees and loyalists often staff it. Professionalisation is not a slogan. It means certification and licensing for practitioners, clear career paths, and enforced standards. It means continuous education in life cycle costing, contract management, supplier development, and ethics. It also means independent oversight and a public right to see where money went and what the nation received in return. Without a recognised profession, chaos, waste, and recklessness thrive in the gaps between good intentions and real delivery.

REALITY AND ITS LESSONS
Audit offices across the continent have flagged the same failures for years. Inflated contracts that add debt without value. Projects that stall because maintenance and spares were never planned. Single-source awards that shut out competition and invite suspicion. These are patterns, not accidents. They flourish in systems where many people touch decisions without licensing, protection from interference, or consequence for poor judgment. The fix begins with standards, training, and daylight.

PROOF FROM PLACES THAT CHOSE DIFFERENTLY
There are credible paths to emulate. South Korea used public orders to build local suppliers and move from import dependence to export strength. Norway insisted on meaningful local participation in oil and gas supply chains and turned a natural resource into intergenerational wealth. Singapore integrated procurement with industrial planning and built world-class logistics and manufacturing on an island short of natural resources. None of these countries waited for miracles. They used public purchasing to stimulate long-term economic growth, as well as industrialisation and long-term development.

INDUSTRIAL POLICY WITH A SIGNATURE
When professionals run procurement, it becomes industrial policy in action. Contracts can include realistic and rising local content, supplier upgrading, and technology transfer with milestones. They can reward on-time delivery and penalise avoidable delay. The goal is not to shut out the world, but to make participation in the local market a pathway for local capability that meets world standards. This approach supports the promise of the African Continental Free Trade Area. Free trade without competitive local production is a mirage. Professional procurement can steer orders to qualified regional value chains so that the single market becomes a factory floor rather than a highway for goods made elsewhere.

REGULATE THE PROFESSION BY ACT OF PARLIAMENT
Diplomacy must be matched with decisiveness. The time has come to regulate procurement as a profession through an Act of Parliament. Such a law should establish a procurement and supply council to license practitioners, set entry standards, mandate continuing development, enforce a code of ethics, and maintain a public register of qualified professionals. It should define sanctions for misconduct, protections for those who report wrongdoing, and require that senior posts be held only by licensed people. That is how nations move from good intentions to predictable excellence.

NOTES TO YOUNG PROFESSIONALS
Procurement transcends clerical tasks; it merges analysis with nation-building. An effective award can aid a factory, hospital, or village. For a socially impactful career, bring your skills. The country needs coders, engineers, scientists, nurses, teachers, and talented buyers to maximise limited funds.

A CLARION CALL: PROFESSIONALISE PROCUREMENT TO UNLOCK INDUSTRIALISATION
If we want factories to rise, we must first license the people who procure. Industrialisation does not begin at the assembly line. It begins at the tender desk, where standards are set, local content is required, supplier development is funded, and technology transfer is written into contracts with clear milestones. Professional procurement is the first machine on the factory floor. Make the link explicit in law. Pass an act of parliament that creates a statutory council to license practitioners, enforce ethics, and mandate continuing learning. Require that senior posts be held only by licensed professionals. Tie significant awards to domestic value addition, skills training, and measurable supplier upgrading. Publish the data so citizens and investors can see progress sector by sector and year by year.

Then follow the money through the real economy. When licensed buyers shift from sticker price to life cycle value, waste falls and reliability rises. When public orders reward qualified local firms, capacity grows and unit costs fall with scale. When small suppliers are paid on time, they hire apprentices, buy better equipment, and graduate into exporters. When contracts demand spares, training, and uptime, hospitals heal, roads endure, and power plants keep working. This is how procurement turns budgets into plant and equipment, and how plant and equipment turn into jobs and exports.

Be direct about choices. If we keep procurement unregulated, we will continue to export raw goods and import finished goods. If we professionalise procurement, we will build domestic value chains that compete on quality and delivery. If we want a stronger currency, we must make more than we consume. If we want to make more than we consume, we must buy with discipline and purpose. Set a simple scoreboard and publish it monthly. Track the share of contracts with verified local content, the number of suppliers upgraded to international standards, average payment time to small firms, the share of awards run through open electronic procurement, and on-time and on-budget delivery rates for major projects. Let the public watch the needle move and let managers feel the pride and pressure that come with visibility.

Each poor award has a face. A mother delayed at a clinic by a collapsed road. A patient turned away by an idle machine. A child held back by a missing textbook. Procurement is not merely finance. It is a moral duty. Buy with the organisation, the nation and people in mind, and the numbers and long-term socio-economic development will follow. This is a national project that invites everyone in. Legislators set the framework. Executives set the tone and protect the professionals. Procurement officers practice the craft and uphold the code. Auditors and journalists keep the profession honest. Citizens judge by results they can touch. The path is clear. License procurement professionals require open data, pay on time, build local content into contracts that deliver real outputs, and maintain what’s built. Do these ordinary things with extraordinary professional consistency, and we will not need to declare industrialisation. African nations will live it! The inconvenient truth is that without professionalised procurement through national Acts of Parliament, industrialisation and long-term economic development, UNSDGs and Agenda 2063 will remain as mere speeches rather than tangible realities.

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