Better Late Than Never: Making the Case for Sustainable Municipal Procurement

Ms. Thandy Pino - CEO and Procurement Specialist, Ntakha Consulting - answer to "are we there yet?" is blunt: we are very late and very behind.

She points to ISO 20400 - the international guideline on sustainable procurement - as the starting point South Africa is missing. The problem, she argues, is that municipalities evaluate suppliers almost entirely on financial criteria. Sustainability never makes it into specifications, evaluation criteria or contract management.

Her practical challenge: where does the laptop box go? Where does the laptop itself go when its lifespan ends? Does the landfill site even have capacity to process it?

These are questions that must be built into specifications and total cost of ownership calculations from the start - not left as afterthoughts. She also calls on government to create incentives for suppliers to become sustainable, drawing a parallel with preferential procurement, which recognised that empowerment costs money.

Tanzania, she notes, is already writing sustainable specifications into vehicle procurement. South Africa is not.

Her closing point is simple: nothing ends wrong - everything starts wrong for it to end wrong. Go back to the start, build the policy, train the staff, engage the market - and do it intentionally.

* From Future Cities Africa webinar: Transparency, Accountability, and Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) in Municipal Procurement Watch: https://futurecitiesafrica.com/webinar/74/transparency-accountability-and-environmental-social-and-governance-esg-in-municipal-procurement