Construction tenders across Africa: where they are published and the rules behind them

Each country below has an official portal or regulator for public tenders and a procurement law that sets the rules for bidding. Portals change address and move to new systems, so confirm the submission route in the tender notice itself.

Kenya. The Public Procurement Regulatory Authority runs the Public Procurement Information Portal, which publishes tender notices and contract awards from national and county government buyers. Procurement is governed by the Public Procurement and Asset Disposal Act, 2015. Under the Access to Government Procurement Opportunities programme (AGPO), some tenders are set aside for enterprises owned by young people, women and persons with disabilities; check the notice to see whether a tender is reserved.

Uganda. The PPDA leads the move to electronic procurement. The eGP Uganda portal lists bid notices by category (works, supplies, consultancy and non-consultancy services), together with best-evaluated-bidder notices and contracts awarded. The governing statute is the PPDA Act (Cap. 205).

Tanzania. Public tenders run through NeST, the National e-Procurement System of Tanzania, under the Public Procurement Act, 2023 (Cap. 410), overseen by Tanzania's Public Procurement Regulatory Authority.

Rwanda. The Rwanda Public Procurement Authority runs Umucyo, the national e-procurement system, under Law No. 62/2018 governing public procurement.

Ethiopia. The Federal Public Procurement and Property Authority oversees federal procurement, and its site links to the national Electronic Government Procurement (eGP) system. Read each tender for the proclamation and directive it is issued under.

South Africa. National Treasury's eTenders Portal gives access to tenders from public sector organisations in every sphere of government, searchable by organ of state and province. Since 16 January 2023, the Preferential Procurement Regulations, 2022 apply an 80/20 preference point system to tenders with a Rand value up to and including R50 million and a 90/10 system above it. The tender documents must state which system applies, the specific goals that earn points, the points for each goal and the proof each claim needs (regulation 3).

Contractors register on the cidb Register of Contractors. Check the grading designation the tender asks for and that your registration is active before you bid. In a joint venture, the cidb requires every partner to be registered in its own right.

Zambia. The Zambia Public Procurement Authority runs an e-GP system, where suppliers register, under the Public Procurement Act No. 8 of 2020.

Nigeria. The Public Procurement Act, 2007 established the Bureau of Public Procurement. BPP runs the Nigeria Open Contracting Portal (NOCOPO), where federal procurement plans and records are published. Read each notice for how and where bids are submitted.

Ghana. The Public Procurement Authority, established by the Public Procurement Act, 2003 (Act 663), now amended by Act 914, launched electronic government procurement, and its e-GP system is GHANEPS, the Ghana Electronic Procurement System. GHANEPS carries annual procurement plans, current tenders, opened-bid details and awarded contracts.

Egypt. Law No. 182 of 2018 regulates the contracts that public entities conclude and repealed the Tenders and Auctions Law No. 89 of 1998. Public tender is the default method for works; general practice, limited practice, limited, two-stage and local tenders and direct agreement are exceptions that need a reasoned decision by the competent authority (Article 7). Every procurement is published on the Public Procurement Portal unless national security requires otherwise, and a public tender is also announced in a widely circulated daily newspaper (Article 20). The detailed procedure sits in the law's executive regulations, so check the tender for the submission route and the forms it requires.

Morocco. Decree No. 2-22-431 of 8 March 2023 governs public procurement. It replaced the 2013 decree from the first day of the sixth month after its publication in the Bulletin officiel (Article 169), and tender notices and documents are published on the Portail marocain des marchés publics.

Two of its rules matter to contractors based outside Morocco. When bidders not established in Morocco compete for works, supplies or services, their financial offers are adjusted by 15% in the comparison, subject to Morocco's international agreements; the rule does not apply to a joint venture in which members established in Morocco hold at least 30% (Article 147). And works contracts must include a local-labour clause, with the rate set in the special conditions up to 20% of the workforce the contract needs (Article 149).

Works financed by the African Development Bank, the World Bank and other lenders are procured by the borrowing government, which advertises them, under the lender's rules. For AfDB-funded projects, the loan agreement or grant protocol requires procurement under the Bank's Procurement Framework, and the Bank publishes standard bidding documents for borrowers to use. For World Bank-financed works, the borrower follows the Procurement Regulations for IPF Borrowers, which require the Bank's standard procurement documents for international competitive procurement.

Bidligence does not read the AfDB website directly, because it blocks automated access. AfDB-funded notices are picked up through UNGM, the national portals and the nightly search where they are published there. These are the multilateral sources Bidligence reads; development-bank tenders explains how lender-funded procurement works.

Bidligence reads the official African sources below for new notices on a schedule. A portal from the table above that is missing here is one Bidligence cannot read automatically today.

New notices are matched against your watch profile (keywords, words to exclude, countries, regions, sources and a minimum value) and land in your opportunity inbox, with a daily or weekly digest e-mail. One click turns a notice into a bid, carrying the buyer, the deadline and the estimated value across. The feed and saved searches are part of the free workspace; see tender alerts.

If a county, agency or utility you bid for is not listed, add its tender page or RSS feed to your workspace's sources. Bidligence then reads it daily, extracting the notices from a web page with AI, and matches them to your watch profile like any other source.

Some tenders are published only in newspapers, on agency websites or on portals that load in the browser. For the African countries below, Bidligence also runs an AI web search for new tenders during the country's local night, once a workspace watches that country. The search counts a limited number of countries from each workspace, so watch the countries you actually bid in. What it finds lands in the same inbox and goes out in the next digest.

The search can cover 66 countries worldwide. It is a second net, not a promise to find every notice, so keep the official portal in your routine.

South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana and Egypt are among Bidligence's 21 regional procurement profiles. Each profile sets the currency, the procurement rules, the typical buyers, the standards and the price sources that the analysis, the documents and the BOQ pricing work from. The South Africa profile, for example, brings in the PPPFA, cidb grading and standards such as SANS and COLTO; the Kenya profile brings in the PPADA and Kenyan and East African standards. Tenders from other African countries use the global profile, which follows World Bank and FIDIC practice.

When you analyse a tender, Bidligence reads the bid security it asks for (type, amount or percentage, currency, validity, acceptable issuers and wording, where the tender states them), the mandatory documents, and the closing date and bid validity as they stand after every amendment you upload. The Bid Score then rates the tender on weighted factors (client, project fit, capability, competition, profitability and risk) before you commit to pricing, and the Submission Guard checks each mandatory item against your Evidence Vault before you submit.

Bid security rules differ by country and by tender; the bid security and validity guide explains what to check. The workspace itself can be read in English, French, Arabic, Swahili, Amharic or Hausa, among other languages; the tender and the bid documents stay in the language the tender asks for.