Professor Sope Williams-Elegbe

Sope Williams-Elegbe is a Professor and Head of the Department of Mercantile Law and the deputy director of the African Procurement Law Unit, Stellenbosch University, South Africa. She specialises in public procurement, anti-corruption law, development law and legal issues around using blockchain and artificial intelligence in the public sector.

She is the author of four books: Fighting Corruption in Public Procurement (2012); Public Procurement and Multilateral Development Banks (2017); with G. Quinot, Public Procurement Regulation for 21^st Century Africa (2018) and Public Procurement Regulation in Africa: Procuring for development in uncertain times (2020).

Sope is a Vice-Chair of the Debarment and Exclusion sub-committee of the International Bar Association and a member of Transparency International’s Working Group on Debarment and Exclusion. She was a member of the World Bank’s International Advisory Group on Procurement (IAGP) from 2008-2011. She has been involved in advising international institutions and government bodies on procurement and anti-corruption matters. In 2011, she was the OECD peer reviewer for the United States’ procurement system; in 2012, she assisted the UNDP Virtual School develop training materials in anti-corruption; in 2014-2015, she assisted the UN to draft the guidelines for open government in Africa; in 2015-2016 she was a EU/UNODC consultant for an anti-corruption/public procurement project Nigeria, and in 2018 she was a consultant on the UNODC Education for Justice project. Between 2016 and 2019, she was involved in training investigators from the Office of the Public Protector in all the provinces in SA. She co-runs the LLM and PG Diploma in Public Procurement Policy and Regulation in Stellenbosch University, the only program of its kind in Africa.

Sope has an LLM (with distinction) from the London School of Economics and a PhD in public procurement and anti-corruption law from the University of Nottingham. She has taught at the universities of Stirling, Nottingham and Lagos.