Key points
- Procurement experts have identified poor data visibility and outdated systems as major barriers limiting AI adoption across African organisations.
- Industry professionals gathered on Tuesday in Lagos for the Digital Procurement Africa Summit powered by Gloopro.
- Statistical measurements reveal that digital procurement systems are reducing transaction turnaround time by approximately 67 per cent.
- Supply chain managers warned that unmanaged tail spend creates financial leakages, fraud risks, and severe compliance breaches.
- Operational experts state that AI deployment is difficult and risky without first building structured, accessible, and reliable data systems.
Main Story
Procurement experts have identified poor data visibility and outdated procurement systems as major barriers limiting Artificial Intelligence adoption across many African organisations.
The experts spoke on Tuesday during the Digital Procurement Africa Summit held in Lagos and powered by Gloopro. The summit was with the theme, ‘Accelerating Procurement Transformation for Large Enterprise in the Digital Era’, attracting procurement professionals, supply chain managers and business leaders.
Olumide Olusanya, Chief Executive Officer of Gloopro, said many African organisations still struggled with procurement digitisation in spite of growing global interest in artificial intelligence-driven procurement systems.
To evaluate intermediate structural dependencies, technology analysts emphasized that advanced software cannot function optimally when data inputs remain heavily fragmented.
Olusanya noted that fragmented procurement records and poor data accessibility often prevented organisations from fully benefiting from automation, predictive analytics and compliance monitoring systems. He explained that many procurement activities still occur outside digital platforms, making artificial intelligence deployment difficult, ineffective and potentially risky for governance systems.
According to him, transformation depends heavily on organisations building structured, accessible and reliable procurement data systems before deploying artificial intelligence solutions.
Furthermore, supply chain directors have introduced outsourcing frameworks to aggressively bridge existing operational gaps and cut corporate overheads.
Speaking on procurement-as-a-service, Olusanya described the model as a digital outsourcing approach enabling organisations to manage procurement operations through external technology-driven platforms.
According to him, procurement-as-a-service helps organisations reduce operational costs while improving procurement turnaround time, supplier coordination and transaction visibility across departments. He added that digital procurement systems were reducing procurement turnaround time by approximately 67 per cent in organisations already embracing technology-driven procurement operations.
The Issues
- Overcoming fragmented offline records to establish structured, accessible, and reliable digital data repositories.
- Eliminating financial leakages and governance weaknesses caused by unmanaged low-value tail spend transactions.
- Eradicating parallel procurement structures created by repeated emergency purchases outside approved central governance systems.
What’s Being Said
- Outlining the fundamental technical dependency that advanced automated systems have on pre-existing digital records, Gloopro CEO Olumide Olusanya said: “AI depends on data. Organisations must first digitise procurement activities before artificial intelligence can deliver meaningful value within procurement operations,”
- Warning companies about the operational realities of resisting technological modernization, Adenrele Thompson, Indirect Procurement Manager, Supplier Chain, at Coca-Cola Company, stated: “If you are not digital, it is only a matter of time. The consequences are inevitable,”
- Explaining how the habit of ignoring smaller transactions gradually breaks down institutional compliance frameworks, Thompson noted that “repeated bypassing of approved procurement systems gradually weakens compliance culture and creates governance gaps across organisations.”
- Detailing how the frequent execution of unchecked low-value purchases quietly normalizes substandard operational habits, he warned “that such practices could gradually normalise weak procurement behaviour and undermine institutional accountability, transparency and operational discipline.”
- Tracking the systemic vulnerabilities that manifest when corporate buying behaviors lack rigorous central oversight, Chukwuma Nkwodinmah, Supply Chain Leader at Aradel Holdings, explained that “weak oversight within unmanaged procurement systems could increase exposure to fraud risks, compliance breaches and operational inefficiencies across organisations.”
- Advocating for a conceptual shift in how corporate boards interpret financial waste, Nkwodinmah maintained: “Once executives begin to see procurement leakage as governance failure rather than operational inefficiency, organisations will pay greater attention to controlling unmanaged spending,”
What’s Next
- African organizations will prioritize procurement digitization to build structured data systems before deploying artificial intelligence solutions.
- Supply chain compliance teams will implement stricter centralized oversight to monitor and control low-value tail spend transactions.
- Executive boards will restructure internal corporate governance to treat unmanaged spending and emergency purchases as direct governance failures.
Bottom Line
Struggling with fragmented records and offline processes, African organizations are facing major barriers to AI adoption, prompting industry experts at the Digital Procurement Africa Summit to demand immediate procurement digitization to curb financial leakages from unmanaged tail spend and reduce transaction turnaround times by 67 per cent.
