Experience

• Canterbury Christ Church University

  Senior Researcher Fellow

  Intersectional Center for Inclusion and Social Justice

• Public Procurement Reform and Governance in Africa

  Palgrave-Macmillan

  This book presents an interdisciplinary exploration of the governance of public procurement reform in Africa. Through a bottom-up approach to case studies and comparative analyses, scholars, practitioners, and social activists write about the organizational mechanisms and implementation gaps in public procurement governance in light of the general premises of national reform. Reforming the ways in which government purchases works, goods, and services from the private sector is one of the most sweeping policy reform undertaken in Africa in the past decade. Despite the transnational scope of policy change, very little is known about the mechanisms of public procurement governance at the subnational level. The argument in this volume is that policy reforms that mitigate contractual hazards along the three-dimensional “law-politics-business matrix” are more likely to bring about meaningful institutional transformation and broader social accountability. Key to substantive transformation of public procurement is the revitalization and professionalization of the public sector to meet the opportunities and challenges of development by contract.

• University of Amsterdam

  Research Fellow

  S.N. worked at University of Amsterdam as a Research Fellow

• Wagadu: Transnational Journal of Gender and Women's Studies

  (Out)bidding Women:Public Procurement Reform Diffusion and Gender Equality in Africa

  First comparative study of gendered dynamics in public procurement reform in Sub-Saharan Africa.
  
  Abstract:
  Are African states bidding for or against gender equality in government outsourcing schemes for the procurement of public works, goods and services? What in the governance of public services provision could be accounted for as continuity of progressive change or setback for gender equality when government outsources its function? Recent scholarship in political science show the status of women has become a global norm and an indicator of development that speaks to the homogenization of an international society. It is widely recognized that economic arrangements that exclude women’s participation are detrimental to the overall economic growth of nation-states. Change in the core functions of the state through outsourcing schemes, however, forces us to query the resilience of gender equality as a key normative variable for policy diffusion within the international society. This essay is concerned with the challenges and opportunities at the intersection of global pressure for policy reform in government outsourcing and national priorities for gender equality. Outsourcing is one way in which governments purchase from the private sector the goods and services they need to fulfill their public mission. Focus here is on the trajectories that gender equality has taken within the context of government outsourcing in Africa. Far from norm emulation, global neoliberal public procurement policy reform has mainly been diffused in Africa through pressure from international institutions and stronger states.
  

• Emory University School of Law

  Visiting Scholar

  S.N. worked at Emory University School of Law as a Visiting Scholar