INCONVENIENT TRUTH: PROFESSIONALISE PROCUREMENT TO CUT WASTE AND ACCELERATE INDUSTRIALISATION
Reduce waste, grow industry, and turn public budgets into real national assets.

By Professor Douglas Boateng

(MSc, EngD, CDIR, FIoD, FCIPS, FIC, FInst.D, FGIPS, F-GHiE, FSOE, FIPlantE, FCILT, FCMI, CEng) rtd 

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

Hon Dr Ato Forson, Minister for Finance, distinguished guests, Hon ministers, leaders of agencies and boards, professional colleagues in procurement, supply chain management, and governance, and to the students who will build tomorrow. Good morning,

I am honoured to stand before you to present my humble opinion and issue a clarion call for the professionalisation of procurement in support of the region-wide resetting and industrialisation agenda.

Let me start with 6 (six) simple questions:

1. If you needed surgery, would you accept an unlicensed surgeon because he has seen it done before?
2. If you have just taken your seat on an aircraft and the air hostess informs you that the pilot is unlicensed, would you still choose to travel or exit the aircraft as quickly as possible if the door is not closed?
3. As a business, would you allow an unqualified accountant to manage your financials?
4. Would you accept anunqualified civil engineer to be responsible for the construction of an overhead bridge or a walkway connecting bridge?
5. Would you trust a dental nurse to extract your teeth?
6. Suppose a cardiologist suddenly switched to becoming an eye specialist, without official approval from the medical and dental council, would you accept their advice on an eye issue you might have?

99% of the delegates gathered here will emphatically say no!!.

• Yet every day, across our continent, we trust national budgets to people who are not licensed procurement professionals.
• We ask them to spend billions, shape markets, and support national growth.

The sad reality is that it has become business as usual, even though we are all paying the price for the intended and unintended consequences of unaccountable and ineffective procurementpractices.

The inconvenient truth is this: business as usual with procurement is costing us schools, clinics, factories, jobs, and the citizenry’s trust.

Plus, sadly, making the life of the Hon Minister for Finance hell, especially with budget overruns.

• How do you hold an unlicensed practitioner accountable?
• Can a practitioner who does not know what to do be held responsible for budget and cost overruns?

How does a nation reset itself when many unqualified individuals, especially in procurement, determine the inputs into industrialisation and long-term development?

Distinguished ladies and gentlemen, today I want to speak about the quiet giant of development: PROCUREMENT and why we must professionalise it now:

With law.

With standards, pride and a strict code of ethics.

A gentle reminder: once the requirements are clarified, Procurement decides how to procure, from whom, where, and why, after which Finance processes the payment.

Dear colleagues, it’s time to wake up the sleeping giant that can boost industrialisation, AfCFTA, and Agenda 2063.  This giant is procurement.

In many developed economies, procurement truly serves as a crucial bridge between policy and real-world outcomes. It’s an essential part of managing a large chunk of public spending and a significant share of the national income, making a real difference every day.

When procurement works, budgets become bridges, clinics, classrooms, and factories.
When it fails, budgets become headlines and disappointment.

Across developing countries, hundreds of thousands of people are involved in public and corporate procurement. Many are committed, but most lack the necessary professional licences and certifications. Nor are they bound by any meaningful and enforceable code of conduct.

It is also concerning that numerous procurement professionals are sometimes uncertain regarding the appropriate steps to undertake.

Procurement expenditures conducted without established standards lead to confusion and sustained poverty.

In the absence of a licensed professional overseeing procurement, unnecessary waste becomes commonplace, and suboptimal decisions are concealed within documentation. 

A gentle reminder that the PFMA and Act 663 are just procedural guidelines and not professional guidelines. There is a difference !!

An African proverb says, When the fence is low, goats visit and eat whatever they can find in the barn.

Weak professional fences in procurement invite the wrong visitors and process custodians.

My distinguished colleagues, buying is never neutral. Every contract either builds capacity or deepens dependence and poverty.

Selling raw materials at low prices while importing finished goods at high prices not only leads to financial losses but also impacts our economic balance. We give up skills, jobs, and bargaining power.

It is about time that we find ways to make this process more sustainable and beneficial for everyone involved.

Exchange rates tell this story without mercy. A nation that procures what it can make is exporting its future one container at a time. Procurement plays a significant part in this.

We all see the signs:

• Roads that fail after one rainy season.
• Machines in hospitals that are unusable or unfixable.
• Textbooks are bought at high prices while classrooms still lack desks.

If history were fond of jokes, bad procurement would be a comedy. But the jokes end when all of us pay the bill.

Ladies and gentlemen,

procurement is a profession like other regulated professions:

• Doctors need licenses to practice.
• Engineers pass exams to practice their profession.
• Accountants are regulated.
• Legal practitioners adhere to a prescribed legal code.

Similar rules and regulations must apply to Procurement

It is widely accepted globally that Procurement practitioners significantly influence the movement of substantial sums of money and shape the future of entire industries and economies.

Yet many offices are staffed with short-term and sometimes unqualified appointees and loyal friends.

Let us be clear:

• A procurement practitioner is anyone who works on purchasing matters.
• The inconvenient truth and reality: Not every practitioner is a professional.
• A procurement professional must be licensed, examined, trained, and bound by an ethical code to serve their organisations, industry and society.
• Not everyone who holds a scalpel is a surgeon.
• Not everyone who does accounting can practice as a chartered accountant unless the ICAG licenses them.

Professionalisation of procurement means:

• Regulation through an Act of Parliament
• Certification and licensing with clear entry rules.
• Ongoing learning in life cycle costing, contract management, supplier development, market analysis, logistics, and ethics, amongst others.
• The inextricable connection between the profession and industrialisation, national and regional development, AfCFTA, and AGENDA 2063

Where there is no professionalism, good intent collapses under pressure. Where there is professionalism, competence becomes culture.

That is why nobody questions the professionalism of engineers, doctors, lawyers, among others. Can that be said about procurement practitioners?

Here is the REALITY AND ITS LESSONS

Auditors across the continent keep pointing to the same issues:

• Inflated contracts that add debt but not value.
• Projects that stall because no one planned for spares and maintenance.
• Single-source contracts that block competition and invite doubt.
• Equipment bought without training
• Equipment with the wrong instructions

These are patterns, not accidents.

They spread when unaccredited practitioners make decisions, have no protection from pressure, or face real consequences for poor judgment.

The remedy is straightforward: the enactment of a legislative Act by Parliament to govern the procurement community.

There are real examples we can learn from:

• South Korea creatively used public orders to grow local suppliers in cars, electronics, and shipbuilding. Government contracts became a classroom that later produced world leaders.
• Norway required strong local participation in oil and gas supply chains. Procurement became a bridge from natural wealth to industrialisation that lasts across generations.
• Singapore linked procurement to industrial policy. The result is now a global benchmark.

They did not wait for miracles.  They used purchase orders as enablers of industrialisation.

• They used contracts as classrooms.
• They judged policy by the number of industries that sprang up.

When professionals run procurement, it becomes industrial policy in action.

Agreements can include:

• Technology transfer with clear milestones.
• Industrialisation.
• Risk, reward and innovative partnerships
• Industrial collaboration and comakership.

This supports the promise of the African Continental Free Trade Area and Agenda 2063.

Free trade without local production is a mirage.

My fellow colleagues, professional procurement can turn one market into one factory floor, not a highway for imports. Many will agree that ethics grows in strong systems and in a regulated environment:

When integrity has structure, doing right becomes normal, not brave.

• Investors value trust.
• Citizens lower their doubts.
• Professionals can say no to pressure and point to the code and the law.

Many nations have Procurement and Financial management Acts. Across the continent, these Acts often struggle to change outcomes because the profession itself is not regulated.

It is time to:

• Pass Acts of Parliament to professionalise procurement:
• Officially endorse the Ghana Institute of Procurement and Supply as the de facto professional body to license and regulate procurement in the country, to :
  •  License practitioners and set entry standards.
  • Institute continuous learning and
  • enforce a code of ethics.
  • Keep a public register of licensed professionals.
  • Require that senior roles be filled only by licensed people.
  • Protect the professional judgment of licensed officers from improper pressure, while holding them accountable for results.

Similar to our accounting colleagues, practitioners retain the option to register with other foreign procurement professional bodies. However, to practise in Ghana, the procurer must be a member of GIPS. Registration with ICAG qualifies a professional to practice within the country, whereas registration with ACCA does not.  The same regulations pertain to the legal profession and should also apply to procurement and GIPS.

This is how nations move from good intent to reliable excellence to reset their national agenda and build the societies they desire.

So what can we do in the next 12 months with the full support of Hon Dr Forson, who is on a mission?

For me, action beats essays and speeches.

Here is a simple plan for the next twelve months:

1. The Government of Ghana can make history by passing the procurement bill by December 31^ST, 2025.
2. Use government procurement to re-engineer and support local supply chain development.
3. After the passing of the ACT, GIPS must:

1. Develop a licensing regime for senior officers, effective from June 2026, and commit to licensing all practitioners within a set timeframe, along with yearly training hours.
2. Create a simple integrity hotline and protect those who speak up.
3. Celebrate agencies that meet standards and openly fix those that do not.

None of this needs fireworks. It requires discipline and a deliberate choice to prioritise results over noise.

What is my humble advice to policymakers, ministers, leaders, and boards?

• The government cannot address everything simultaneously. However, to support the resetting agenda, procurement professionalisation and associated reforms should be one of the top 2 government priorities.
• Appoint qualified individuals and empower them with the authority and protection to act.
• Establish a clear charter that connects procurement to organisational, industry, national and continental growth.
• Replace those who will not learn. Reward those who deliver.

To students and early career colleagues: procurement is not a clerical function. It is where analysis meets organisational, national and continental building.

One well thought-through procurement can anchor a factory, keep a hospital running, or save a village from a washed-out road.

If you want a career with clear social impact, bring your mind, your curiosity, and your ethics to this field. Africa needs engineers, nurses, and teachers. It also needs great procurement people who can make scarce money do great things.

Remember this: the purchase order is a policy tool. Use it wisely, and you will write development into daily life.

Ladies and gentlemen, each poor purchase has a face.

1. A mother delayed at a clinic due to a broken road.
2. A patient turned away from kidney treatment centre due to lack of or broken equipment.
3. A child set back by a missing book.
4. Traffic jams due to broken traffic lights

Procurement is not just about buying. It is a moral and developmental duty to the unborn African child.  Africans must prioritise buying with organisation, society and people in mind, and the numbers and growth will follow.

In conclusion, ladies and gentlemen

• If we want factories to rise, the Government must license the people who procure.
• If we want a stable currency, the Government must strategically source through procurement.

If we want long-term industrialisation, the Government must unapologetically and strategically utilise government spending. 

A gentle reminder that industrial growth does not start at the assembly line. It starts at the tender and acquisition desk, where standards are set, local content is determined, supplier development is funded, and technology transfer is written into agreements with clear steps.

• Professional procurement is what enables the right and first machine to be placed on the factory floor.
• Professional procurement is the key to curtailing wasteful expenditure.

Professionalising procurement is one of the keys to avoiding the IMF.

For the sake of the youth and the unborn African child, it is imperative that African nations enact Acts of Parliament to regulate practitioners, uphold ethical standards, and mandate ongoing professional development, in support of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) and Agenda 2063.

Like other professions, senior procurement positions should be filled exclusively by licensed professionals.

In so doing, the government can tie major contracts to local value addition, industrialisation, job creation and long-term development.

Hon minister and colleagues,

• When licensed buyers choose life cycle value over sticker price, waste falls and reliability rises.
• When public orders reward qualified local firms, capacity grows and unit costs fall with scale.
• When we buy from small and medium-sized suppliers and pay them on time, they hire, invest, and begin to export.
• When agreements require spares, training, and uptime, hospitals heal, roads last, and power plants run.
• It is the licensed and empowered procurement professional who will make this possible in Africa.

The time has come for us to face the truth head-on to support the country’s developmental agenda.

• If we keep procurement unregulated, we will continue to export raw goods and import finished goods.
• If we professionalise procurement, we will build value chains at home that compete on quality and delivery.
• If we want a stronger currency, we must make more than we consume. This can only be achieved through strategic sourcing.

To make more than we consume, we must procure with discipline and purpose and with national development in mind..

By December 31^st 2026, Ghana can lead by example by setting a simple public scoreboard:

• Publicly share awards exceeding $ 5 million USD
  • What percentage is awarded to locals?

A regulated GIPS must

Share of projects delivered on time and within budget.

Share the number of licensed procurement professionals.

• Publicly share agreements with verified local content.

Let the people see the needle move!.

Let the procurement professional feel the healthy pride and pressure that come with visibility.

This is a national project for all of us:

Lawmakers set the frame.

Executives set the tone.

Procurement officers practice their craft and keep within established codes of conduct.

By doing ordinary things with steady professionalism, we will not need to announce industrialisation. We will live it.

The inconvenient truth is this: without professionalised procurement backed by strong national law, industrialisation will remain a speech and the African resetting agenda will struggle to materialise and not become a reality.

The Africa we envision is within our control, and our brightest days lie ahead.  However, it is up to us to make the decisions that will help us achieve our potential.

The professionalisation of procurement is one such decision, and it is our responsibility to professionalise it through an Act of Parliament. This will unlock its role in industrialisation, cutting wasteful spending, and supporting long-term development.

Thank you for your attention.