Digital procurement executives, policymakers, and corporate leaders from across Africa will gather in Lagos later this month to confront the continent's most pressing supply chain challenges. The focus will be on how digital technologies can eliminate fraud, inefficiency, and weak oversight.
Digital Procurement Africa Summit 2026
The Digital Procurement Africa (DPA) Summit 2026, scheduled for May 26, comes at a critical juncture. African businesses are rapidly shifting procurement from a back-office administrative function to a strategic boardroom priority amidst intensifying pressure to improve transparency, cost control, and operational efficiency.
Organised by Gloopro, a leading provider of eProcurement and Procurement-as-a-Service solutions, the exclusive, closed-door executive forum is themed: 'Accelerating Procurement Transformation for Large Enterprises in the Digital Era.'
Urgency of Digital Transformation
Speaking at a press conference ahead of the event, Chief Executive Officer of Gloopro, Dr Olumide Olusanya, emphasised the urgency of the gathering. He said, 'Africa's procurement ecosystem is entering a defining moment, and digital transformation is at the centre of it. The DPA Summit 2026 is a call to the leaders shaping the future of procurement across public and private sectors to come together, share what is genuinely working on the ground, and commit to the practical shifts our continent now requires.'
The summit highlights a broader push by African enterprises to transition to digital frameworks as they battle persistent vulnerabilities. These include off-contract spending and leaked enterprise value, fragmented supplier oversight across informal markets, and maligned ERP systems. Many global Enterprise Resource Planning tools fail to align with Africa's heavily informal supplier networks, driving up operational costs and weakening governance controls.
Innovative Summit Format
To tackle these issues, the summit will ditch conventional, lecture-heavy conference formats. Instead, it will feature smaller executive roundtables, fireside chats, and working sessions designed to foster candid debates and actionable outcomes. Key sessions will drill down into the hidden costs of manual processes, leveraging automation to boost executive productivity, and using digital systems to rein in decentralised purchasing and tail-spend.
While procurement digitalisation is gaining rapid traction globally as a tool to mitigate fraud and strengthen compliance, adoption across Africa remains uneven. Enterprises continue to navigate infrastructure gaps, fragmented ecosystems, and varying levels of digital readiness. The high-level event is expected to attract top-tier executives from multinational firms, major public institutions, and large private-sector organisations from across the continent.
