The African Public Procurement Network (RACOP) proposed Thursday in Dakar to strengthen and harmonise public procurement reforms on the continent, according to Saër Niang who argued that Africa needs more than ever to strengthen the economic governance policy as one of the fundamental pillars of development policies.
“I a synergistic approach, RACOP wishes to give agencies and administrations a dynamic articulated to the new environment in our continent,” RACOP president Niang said, adding that “such an objective calls for speedy procedures, the modernisation of national systems and the dematerialisation of operations.
Speaking at the opening of the first RACOP General Assembly, Niang said the institution “needs more than ever a relationship of trust with governments, the private sector and the civil society to optimise the management of government procurement and thus streamline public spending.”
He thus reaffirmed RACOP’s willingness to play its role through advice, risk management and democracy in the governance of public procurement on our continent, basing its offer on “the fact that the scarcity of resources in our countries reinforces the need to confer efficiency and rationality to public spending.”
Presiding over the meeting, the Minister of State, Secretary General of the Presidency of the Republic, Mahammad Boun Abdallah Dionne, recalled “the imperative of the efficient and rationalised use of public resources, which are in reality rare and limited.”
Two years ago, the World Bank estimated the African continent’s infrastructure needs at $93 billion per year, or about 15 percent of the continent’s GDP,” Dionne said.
“Faced with the importance of such needs, he said, we need to innovate in Africa in the approach and conduct of public policies in public procurement to move quickly and effectively towards efficiency and performance without affecting control.
Similarly, he added, “our procedures for the award and execution of public contracts must be reviewed in order to achieve satisfactory speed in the conduct of infrastructure projects that promote the development and social progress of nations in a transparent manner.”
Dionne also called for a modernisation of the intervention of the organs of the public procurement system by directing them more towards the digitalisation of procedures,” as a source of efficiency, diligence, cost reduction and above all of increased competition and transparency.”
ARD/te/lb/Dng/APA