Sope Williams is a professor of public procurement law and the deputy director of the African Procurement Law Unit, Stellenbosch University, South Africa. She is an expert in anti-corruption law, public procurement law and policy in Africa; procurement in the multilateral development banks; gender-responsive procurement; emergency contracting; and sustainable public procurement. She has written/co-edited 6 books: Fighting Corruption in Public Procurement (2012); Public Procurement and Multilateral Development Banks (2017); Public Procurement Regulation for 21st Century Africa (2018); Public Procurement Regulation in Africa: Development in uncertain times (2020); Routledge Handbook of Public Procurement Corruption (2024) and Routledge Handbook of Gender and Procurement (2025) and authored over 65 peer-reviewed publications. She co-developed and teaches on the LLM and PGDip in Public Procurement Regulation and Policy at Stellenbosch University, the first if its kind in Africa.

She has been globally recognised for her research and in 2024, she obtained her second NRF rating in the B1 category (internationally recognized researcher). In October 2024, she was a recipient Stellenbosch University’s Research and Innovation Excellence Award. In December 2022, she was awarded the prestigious International Anti-Corruption Excellence Award for Academic Research and Education by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the State of Qatar. In 2021 she was designated by the Open Contracting Partnership (USA) as an “anti-corruption champion.” She also received Stellenbosch University’s Research Excellence Award twice- in 2014 and 2019. In 2020 she was also appointed as a research fellow by the Public Procurement Research Group in the University of Nottingham, UK. Her research was cited by the South African Constitutional Court in the case of Shaik v The State (2008), in which corruption allegations were levelled against former President Jacob Zuma.

She is involved in academic and policy oriented research and has drafted some significant policy and research reports including “Legal Research on Sextortion/Sexual Corruption in South Africa” for Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, (2024); “Public Procurement and Women’s Economic Empowerment” for the International Development Research Centre (2023); “Improving the State of Gender Responsive Procurement in South Africa” for UN Women (2023); “Crisis Responses and Corruption in Vulnerable Sectors” for Global Integrity (2022); “Equity and Inclusion of Women-Owned Businesses in Public Procurement in South Africa” for the Open Contracting Partnership (2021); “Unlocking the potential for Open Government in Africa” for the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (2017); and the “Review of Federal Public Procurement in the United States” for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (2011).

She is a regular keynote and conference speaker and has spoken at over 150 international events in over 42 countries. As an expert on anti-corruption law and policy, she developed anti-corruption courses for the UN Virtual School in 2012 and the UNODC in 2019. She served on the World Bank’s Procurement Technical Advisory Group from 2008- 2011, created to advise the World Bank on its procurement policy.

She has an LLM (with distinction) from the London School of Economics (2000), and a PhD in public procurement and anti-corruption law from the University of Nottingham, UK (2011). She has worked at the universities of Stirling and Nottingham, both in the UK, and the University of Lagos in Nigeria.