Public sector and institutional strengthening

What institutional strengthening means

Institutional strengthening is the work of making a public institution able to do what it was set up to do, reliably and accountably. It covers four things: clear governance and decision rights; an organisation designed around the institution's mandate; systems for finance, people and performance that work in practice; and staff with the skills to run them. Policies and organograms are the easy part. The harder part is changing how decisions are made and how people are held to account.

Public sector advisory in Nigeria and Africa

Carthena Advisory works with ministries, departments and agencies, state governments, regulators, government-owned enterprises and development partners. We design reforms that fit the political economy of each institution, because reform that ignores how decisions are really made rarely survives a change of leadership. Our interventions are sequenced to deliver early, visible results that build support for the deeper changes that follow.

Institutional assessment

Every engagement starts with an assessment of where the institution stands: its mandate and governance, structure and processes, people and skills, finances and the services it delivers. We find the few weaknesses that hold back performance most, and set out a reform programme that addresses their causes rather than their symptoms.

Governance and accountability

We design governance that makes clear who decides what, and who answers for it. Our governance work includes board effectiveness reviews, governance codes for government-owned enterprises, regulatory frameworks, and performance management that links an institution's objectives to the targets of each unit and officer.

Organisation design and restructuring

We redesign structures, roles and processes so that an institution is organised around its mandate rather than its history. This includes operating model design, merging or separating functions, role clarity, and the redesign of processes that slow service delivery.

Public-private partnership advisory

Many public projects in Nigeria now depend on private capital. We help institutions prepare and structure public-private partnerships: assessing whether a project can attract investors, setting the risk allocation and payment model, and preparing the business case that approval bodies and investors will test. Our PPP work includes social infrastructure such as student accommodation in the university sector.

Capacity building and programme support

Reform lasts only when the institution's own staff can sustain it. We combine advisory work with training, coaching and knowledge transfer, drawing on Carthena's corporate training programmes. For development partner programmes, we provide programme management support that tracks spending and results against agreed outcomes.

Measuring whether reform is working

Reform programmes often report activity, such as workshops held, manuals written and staff trained, rather than results. We agree a small set of measures with each institution at the start: how long its core services take, how much revenue it collects, how many of its decisions are made on time, and how the people it serves rate it. Those measures are tracked through implementation, so the institution, its oversight bodies and any development partner can see what has changed.

Working with development partners

Many institutional programmes in Nigeria are funded or co-funded by development partners. We work within their reporting and procurement requirements, align the reform programme with the outcomes the funder has committed to, and provide the evidence of results that renewals and further funding depend on.

How an engagement runs

1. Assessment (typically six to ten weeks). Governance, organisation, systems, people and service delivery, measured against the institution's mandate.
2. Reform design. A sequenced reform programme with owners, milestones and measures of success.
3. Implementation support. Hands-on support to put the reforms in place, with capacity building so that the institution's own team carries them forward.

Why Carthena

Carthena Advisory has written extensively on Nigeria's institutions, governance and public policy, and our institutional work draws on the same analysis. Our Strategic Synergy Integration (SSI) methodology examines how an institution's beliefs, architecture and capabilities fit together, which is where most reforms succeed or fail. We judge our work by sustained improvements in the institution's performance, not by the documents we deliver.