- Global reputation alone may not be enough to win African tenders if a company lacks local credibility and market understanding.
- Companies that engage policymakers, regulators and industry forums early can build the visibility and trust needed when major opportunities arise.
- Sharon Cheramboss argues that sustainable growth is built years before a tender through consistent local engagement, expertise and public visibility.
In 2014, I watched a global technology company lose a government digital infrastructure tender in Kenya, valued at about USD 170 million, to a regional technology company with a fraction of its footprint.
On paper, the global company looked like the obvious winner, with deep technical expertise, substantial implementation capacity, and an international reputation.
My first assumption was that the technical evaluation or commercial proposal must have favoured the regional bidder. But nothing that emerged afterwards supported that: there was no indication the proposal had been weaker, and no flaw in the procurement process to point to.
In the weeks that followed, I spoke with people involved in East Africa’s tech ecosystem and looked more closely at the two organisations’ presence in the market. A pattern emerged.
The regional company had spent years becoming part of the market it wanted to serve. Its executives regularly shared perspectives on issues decision-makers faced, spoke at regional forums alongside regulators and development finance institutions, and wrote for publications that policymakers and senior executives read.
By the time procurement began, it was no longer simply another bidder. It had become recognised as an organisation that understood how the sector worked.
What the questions reveal
Over more than 14 years working with technology, telecommunications and innovation organisations across East Africa, I’ve seen the same pattern repeatedly. Companies often assume opportunities are won or lost on pricing, product features, or proposal quality.
Those factors matter, but they rarely explain why one organisation consistently wins while another, equally capable, falls short.
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Long before organisations submit a proposal or begin serious commercial discussions, they reveal how prepared they are by the way they talk about growth. The questions they ask in those early conversations reveal more than leaders realise. Some want to know how quickly they can generate leads, who the largest customers are, or how soon they can begin selling.
Others ask different questions. Who influences this sector? Which ministries, regulators, or publications shape decisions and opinion? Which conferences matter? Which conversations should we be contributing to before we have something to sell?
Those questions tell me an organisation is preparing to participate in a market.
It becomes clearer still when they describe their strategy. If they simply say they are expanding into “Africa” or “Sub-Saharan Africa”, it usually tells me their presence is organisational rather than commercial. They may have a regional office, but they haven’t developed a market position.
The conversation changes when leaders begin naming countries, sectors, institutions, and stakeholders. They understand that credibility is built market by market. What builds trust in Nairobi isn’t necessarily what builds confidence in Dakar. That’s exactly what the regional company had spent years doing before the tender was announced.
I’ve also seen the reverse play out. A private education company entered several African markets with a proven model and funding behind it, believing its global reputation would open doors. What it never built was local visibility: its coverage and public statements were aimed at donors and international financiers, not local audiences, and its own impact report, the document that should have built confidence in the market, was never published locally.
Before organisations commit millions of dollars or award strategically important contracts, they rarely rely on proposals alone. They look for evidence that a company understands the market and has earned credibility with the people and institutions that shape it.
This isn’t about private networks. It’s about building a public track record of expertise over time: publishing informed perspectives, speaking at industry events, and contributing to policy discussions before asking anyone to buy.
Any organisation can do this. But very few do, because the investment is slow. It costs for two or three years before it produces anything a finance team can point to, and cannot be attributed to any specific contract because, by design, it happens before the contract exists.
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The people who understand this best are often the ones least able to fund it. The country director who knows which forums matter is asking a global CFO to spend against a return that will show up in someone else’s reporting period. That’s the real barrier. Not conviction. Structure.
When growth is fragmented
Budget isn’t the only obstacle. The work of building credibility is also spread across different parts of the organisation. Market understanding sits with one team, stakeholder engagement with another, communications owns visibility, and business development converts opportunities into revenue. Each has different budgets, leaders, and performance measures, and individually, each is doing exactly what it has been asked to do.
Clients don’t experience them separately. They experience a single organisation and form a single judgement: does this company understand the market it wants to serve?
When these activities aren’t connected, credibility is built in fragments rather than over time. The organisations that consistently succeed treat these as one discipline, not four.
Communications is usually the thread that holds them together, though it’s rarely described that way. One company won because it published, spoke, and contributed to the debates its buyers cared about. The other lost because the document that could have earned it local confidence never reached a local newsroom.
Growth isn’t built at the point of sale. It’s built in the years beforehand. The question worth asking is not whether your next proposal will be strong enough. It’s whether the market will already know who you are when it lands.
By Sharon Cheramboss
Senior Growth Director, APO Group
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