Why the world's procurement profession body is betting on Kenya

Kenya has been named the regional base of the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply (CIPS), the world’s largest professional body for procurement and supply, in a move its global leadership says is intended to make the country the reference point for the profession on the African continent.

The institute officially launched its East Africa office in Nairobi in August before an audience of chief procurement officers, supply chain directors, regulators, academics and corporate partners, confirming Kenya as the coordinating hub for its operations in 13 countries.

“We had a commitment in our conversation today to make Kenya Africa’s shining star for the professionalisation of procurement,” said CIPS global chief executive Ben Farrell, MBE, referring to talks held earlier in the day with the Public Procurement Regulatory Authority on embedding global standards across the public sector.

“We’re here, we’re here to stay, and we’re firmly committed to the professionalisation of procurement across this continent,” he told guests, noting that the office fulfills a pledge he made on his first visit to Nairobi exactly a year earlier.

CIPS East Africa general manager Letticia Nkumbula said the Nairobi office will serve members and corporate clients in Kenya, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Rwanda, South Sudan, Somalia, Djibouti, Eritrea, Seychelles and Comoros, among others.

“Kenya is the gateway to every corner of East Africa,” she said. “Organisations that want a presence in the region start by looking at Kenya, and so did we."

Beyond the ribbon cutting, the evening turned into a discussion about who will do procurement work in 10 years, and whether enough young people are being told it exists.

Farrell said CIPS is moving from being a body that certifies people mid-career to what he called a partner for a professional life, engaging learners from school age onwards.

In the United Kingdom, procurement has been written into the technical qualifications syllabus taken by 16-year-olds.

CIPS has five accredited study centres in Kenya. Globally, it works with about 103 accredited universities and 276 study centres, and is targeting 200 universities and 400 centres by 2030 so that the pipeline into the profession is wide enough to meet demand.

The institute says 13 million people worldwide now list procurement or supply in their LinkedIn job titles, a pool growing at roughly 10 percent a year as businesses discover they cannot operate without the skill.

There are concerns, however, on artificial intelligence and whether it threatens the very jobs CIPS is recruiting young people into.

Farrell, who said he has studied the technology’s deployment across markets from Singapore to Malaysia, sought to allay the fears.

“It won’t take your job. It’s going to give you a chance to do a fabulously new and exciting job,” he said, describing teams in South East Asia using AI to arbitrage foreign exchange rates on invoices and to open new sourcing markets by modelling tariff exposure.

But he cautioned that the technology raises the value of expertise rather than lowering it. “Knowledge is at a greater premium in the era of AI than at any stage before,” he said.

“You actually need the knowledge to judge if AI is giving you a proper answer.”

New legislation in the European Union already requires organisations to demonstrate that their people are capable of managing the AI they deploy.

That has prompted a question the institute is now working through: what does the entry-level job look like for a procurement professional whose first responsibility is directing AI agents rather than processing orders.

“Some people might say you don’t need any knowledge,” Farrell said. “I can tell you, you need knowledge.”

Employers in the frame

Gladys Gacheru, a CIPS East Africa business development manager, said the office’s work will centre on employers as much as individuals, covering capability analysis, skills-gap assessment, competency development, ethics and professional standards.

“Procurement is increasingly a function that enables growth, resilience and innovation, and enables organisations to compete,” she said, noting that Kenyan teams are contending simultaneously with supply disruption, technology adoption, sustainability rules, regulatory expectations and rising demand to demonstrate measurable business value.

“Stronger procurement functions will not be built by CIPS alone. They will be built through partnerships with organisations, chief procurement officers, academia and the wider business community,” she said.

The urgency, CIPS argues, comes from a world that has stopped behaving predictably. Four decades of globalisation built on lowest-cost sourcing have given way to a model organised around resilience, with boards turning to procurement teams for continuity of supply.

Citing the institute’s global State of Procurement and Supply survey, Farrell said 73 per cent of chief procurement officers now carry direct responsibility for environmental, social and governance performance.

Demographics place Kenya on the right side of that shift. Africa’s population of about 1.6 billion is projected to reach 3.4 billion within 50 years at a time when working-age populations elsewhere are contracting.

“We’re going to need Africans all over the planet to help grow nations, drive the prosperity of nations,” Farrell said.

The institute has opened a global consultation, the Great Conversation, on the skills the profession will need, and will publish its conclusions in 2027 as the Great Response, setting out job profiles and competencies for 2030.