The warning was a key highlight at the Digital Procurement Africa Summit 2026, where experts said resistance to automation, weak stakeholder engagement, and continued dependence on manual procurement processes are exposing organisations to hidden financial leakages, talent drain, and growing competitive threats.

Speakers at the summit said businesses that continue to delay procurement digitisation could become structurally disadvantaged within the next 12 to 24 months as faster, data-driven competitors accelerate decision-making and improve operational efficiency through automation and artificial intelligence.

Speakers at the summit said businesses that continue to delay procurement digitisation could become structurally disadvantaged within the next 12 to 24 months as faster, data-driven competitors accelerate decision-making and improve operational efficiency through automation and artificial intelligence.

 

Digital procurement: Businesses face 24-month deadline over delay

The concerns were raised during the summit’s second panel session, themed Reclaiming Executive Time Through Automation, which explored how governance reforms, automation, and artificial intelligence are reshaping procurement operations and improving organisational resilience.

The panelists included Kayode Momoh, the Chief Operating Officer at Berger Paints Nigeria PLC; Modupe Oyeneyin, Division Manager, Supply Chain and Procurement, Oando Energy Resources; and Cephas Adebuameh, Group Director, Supply Chain, Flour Mills Nigeria PLC.

The panelists said the traditional corporate structure, where IT departments independently develop digital tools and hand them over to procurement teams, is no longer sustainable in a rapidly evolving business environment.

Instead, they argued that organisations must align executives, procurement teams, IT departments and employees from the earliest stages of digital transformation to avoid costly implementation failures and business stagnation.

According to the panelists, successful procurement modernisation depends on transparency, broad internal engagement and dismantling operational silos, not simply introducing technology for technology’s sake.

“I believe there is a need for collaboration because some of the things I see with the IT team sometimes is that they sit in their team, they craft a solution for you, and then they come and say, take the solution,” Oyeneyin said.

She explained that one of the biggest barriers to digital procurement adoption remains executive resistance, particularly where business leaders fail to immediately see the financial returns of automation or are uncomfortable with the transparency digital systems introduce.

According to her, organisations can overcome that resistance by clearly demonstrating the financial losses tied to inefficient manual procurement systems.

“For top executives, let them see that their lack of digitalisation is actually causing value erosion. When they see that, they will be the ones championing this change,” Oyeneyin said.

The panel also highlighted how manual procurement workflows continue to trap senior executives in repetitive approval cycles and low-value transactions, reducing the time available for strategic leadership and business expansion.

Adebuameh said organisations deploying automated procurement workflows with strong internal controls are better positioned to scale efficiently and eliminate waste.

He cited the scale of procurement operations at Flour Mills of Nigeria Plc, noting that the organisation processed more than 6,400 transactions and 2,900 bills in a single month, volumes he said would be difficult to manage efficiently without automation.

According to him, digital systems reduce hidden costs, improve visibility and remove long-standing opacity from procurement transactions.

“There are a lot of hidden costs, particularly in the indirect procurement space. A lot of hidden leakages and a lot of opacity would be removed from the transactions,” Adebuameh said.

He issued one of the summit’s strongest warnings, saying companies that continue to rely on outdated procurement systems may struggle to survive.

“If you continue to stay in the old ways of manually processing your procurement systems, it’s just a matter of time before you run out of business,” he said.

Speakers at the summit described the risk as more than operational inefficiency, warning that delayed digital adoption could rapidly erode competitiveness as automated businesses gain speed, agility and stronger data intelligence.

They said companies that digitise procurement workflows are able to access real-time business intelligence, make faster decisions and respond more effectively to changing market conditions, advantages manual systems cannot easily replicate.

The panel warned that organisations remaining structurally behind because of outdated procurement practices could be overtaken and forced out of the market within the next 18 to 24 months.

The summit also examined the growing role of artificial intelligence in procurement operations, with participants noting that platforms such as Globo are already driving efficiency gains across African organisations.

Despite that shift, panelists agreed that automation must still operate with human oversight.

Momoh advocated a human-in-the-loop model, saying AI should support professional judgment rather than replace it.

“You need human intervention to judge the results… particularly if you do a prompt, for instance, you must have the knowledge of what you are prompting about. You must be able to decipher if the information that you are getting is relevant or not,” Momoh said.

The speakers said digitised procurement systems also strengthen institutional continuity by preserving supplier history, transaction records and decision trails beyond any single employee.

According to the panel, businesses that continue to depend on legacy paperwork risk being overtaken by competitors that leverage automation and data-driven systems to improve procurement speed and market responsiveness.

Nigeria’s public sector has also intensified procurement digitisation efforts through the Bureau of Public Procurement and its Procurement Compliance Monitoring Service (P-COMS), a platform designed to enable real-time monitoring and digitisation of procurement activities across government agencies.