At the Digital Procurement Africa Summit, experts agree that digitisation is the future of procurement
At the Digital Procurement Africa Summit 2026, industry leaders warned that manual procurement processes are draining company resources. The consensus was that digitisation, AI, and tools like Gloopro are essential to reduce tail spend and improve efficiency.
<br />
Procurement management has always been a primarily manual role. The procurement manager keeps records of all the resources the organisation needs, sources, liaises with, and manages several vendors, and handles the whole supply chain process. At the maiden edition of the Digital Procurement Africa Summit 2026, held on May 26, 2026, in Lagos, Nigeria, procurement experts from various industries gathered to discuss ways to improve the procurement process in African companies by digitising it to close gaps.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
The event, sponsored by Gloopro, a procurement-as-a-service solution for International Oil Companies (IOCs) and Multinational Corporations (MNCs), brought together C-Suite procurement experts from organisations including Flour Mills of Nigeria, Oando Energy, and Coca-Cola. At the crux of the conversation was how to address financial leakages stemming from tail spend and manual processes.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Technology is the way forward<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
In the first panel session, moderated by Isa Alyiushata, President, Association of Digital Financial Practitioners of Nigeria, the two panellists— Ivy Aisueni, Contracts and Procurement Lead, First E & P, and Afolabi Ademuyiwa, Head Inbound Logistics & Procurement, CAP PLC — agreed that a company’s financial future can be hampered by unchecked leakages in its procurement process.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
The experts argued that every company must first conduct an audit of its manual procurement process to fully assess its impact on the business’s bottom line, and then transition to a digital system to prevent further financial wastage.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
In the second panel session, Cephas Afebuameh, Group Director, Supply Chain, Flour Mills of Nigeria PLC, emphasised the importance of adopting technology in procurement noting that organisations risk going into extinction otherwise.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
“They will be out of existence because you need resilience, you need speed, you need agility, and you also know that you can’t survive now without having technology,” he said.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
He added that, with manual processes, procureme...
