Why procurement professionals must govern AI, not just use it

Two weeks ago, we opened the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply (CIPS) Kenya office in Nairobi. I told the room at the Serena that we are here, that we are here to stay, and that we are committed to the professionalisation of procurement across this continent.

That was not a courtesy line. It was a judgement about where this profession is going and about Kenya's place in it.

For years, procurement across East Africa has been treated as a back-office function: raise the order, chase the supplier, keep the lights on. That era is ending.

Where cost was once the primary driver of supply, the conversation now centres on resilience in both the private and public sectors. But the obstacle is not efficiency. It is fragmentation.

Suppliers, standards, data and financing sit in separate silos, and every familiar complaint traces back to that single condition. A compliant, creditworthy supplier in Nairobi is often unverifiable in Kampala or Kigali because no shared regional framework exists for supplier vetting or ethics accreditation.

Certification remains the exception rather than the norm. This is not a talent shortage but a recognition gap. And digitisation without a professionalised workforce does not fix fragmentation. It only makes it happen faster.

Standards have to sit within how regulators license and audit, not only within how a professional body certifies. Now add artificial intelligence. Procurement is acquiring a second workforce: agents that draft, analyse and, under human authority, execute.

The professional of 2031 will manage people and machines alike and will need to govern AI as much as use it. Whose data trained it?