The United Nations System in Nigeria, through its Inter-Agency Procurement Working Group has held a symposium that engages persons with disabilities on inclusive procurement opportunities in the UN.
The symposium titled “Advancing Opportunities for Persons with Disabilities through Inclusive Procurement,” was held in Abuja. It served as a platform for exploring innovative strategies, sharing best practices, and fostering collaborations that promote a more inclusive and equitable procurement ecosystem.
It also served as a platform for creating opportunities for businesses owned, co-owned, or led by persons with disabilities, while highlighting how UN procurement decisions can drive inclusivity, equity and addressing the specific needs of marginalised groups.
The event brought together persons with disability to not only enlighten them on the opportunities abound in the UN procurement but also ‘to educate them on business strategies, and how to search for available procurement opportunities and maneuver the bidding and tender procedures.’
It availed the participants the opportunity to interact and ask questions and clarify issues.
Speaking on what necessitated the symposium, the Chairperson of the UN Interagency Network, Mr. Daniel Kuhe from the World Food Programme (WFP) said; “the symposium is to ensure equity, equality and inclusivity in procurement across UN agencies.”
Business capacity
Mr. Kuhe said persons with Disabilities have the capacity to do business and the UN should be given the opportunity.
“There is a misconception that people with disabilities may lack the capacity. However, when I arrived, the first person I met was Mr. Rahim Yusuf, who uses a wheelchair. We struck up a conversation as I was waiting for others to arrive.
“By the end of the day, I reviewed his profile, and I was impressed. He specialises in designing, constructing, and installing disability inclusion and accessibility infrastructure. I thought to myself, why shouldn’t Mr. Rahim be among those doing business with the UN? Unfortunately, there’s a negative bias due to his condition, but the reality is that many people within Organisations of Persons with Disabilities, OPDs, are highly capable and may even surpass expectations. They deserve the opportunity to be involved,” he explained.
Mr Kuhe noted that the symposium signaled the UN’s agencies are ready to do business with persons with disability.
“We are not presenting a perfect system. What we’re doing is, we ensure that we are expressing our commitment to show that the UN procurement wants persons with disabilities to do business. So there are going to be accessible tools to ensure that our platform is improving, or basically, we are doing very well, but we’re going to improve to ensure that we all have different categories of disability. We ensure that whatever we’re doing is accessible to them, just by the categories,” he said.
He stressed that, under his tenure as Chairperson of the UN Interagency Network, efforts are being made to ensure the network works together to drive processes collectively, rather than duplicating the procurement process.
Mr. Kuhe added that the symposium was part of the activities to commemorate the United Nations International Day of Persons with Disabilities, observed annually on December 3rd.
Mercy Chukwudiebere
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