Nigeria's participation in the Leadership Excellence in Africa's Public Sector programme, known as LEAPS, places the country among African nations using leadership development alongside technical reforms to address weaknesses in public financial management. The programme is implemented by the African Capacity Building Foundation with support from the Gates Foundation and focuses on officials working at the centre of financial management and reform implementation.
Nigeria and Tanzania joined the programme's second cohort, while Ethiopia became the ninth country to participate in the third cohort. According to the ACBF, the wider programme has enrolled more than 295 participants across eight African countries since it began in 2024.
The initiative comes at an important time for Nigeria, where the effectiveness of public financial management has become increasingly important as the government seeks to strengthen revenue mobilisation, improve budget implementation, manage fiscal risks and create more room for development spending.
At the heart of the programme is the argument that financial reform cannot succeed through policies, technology and technical expertise alone. The officials responsible for implementing those reforms must also be able to lead organisational change, coordinate institutions, manage resistance and maintain momentum when reforms become politically or administratively difficult.
That is the gap the LEAPS programme is designed to address. Rather than relying solely on conventional classroom training, the programme combines leadership assessment, personal development plans, individual and group coaching, peer learning, technical seminars and practical work based on real public financial management challenges.
ACBF Executive Secretary Mamadou Biteye said public institutions could not achieve lasting reform simply by introducing new systems. He argued that the people responsible for implementing policies and managing institutions ultimately determine whether reforms produce sustainable results.
The emphasis is significant because public financial management covers much more than the preparation of government budgets. It includes how governments raise revenue, allocate resources, control expenditure, manage public funds, report financial information and identify risks that could affect public finances.
When those systems work effectively, governments are better positioned to understand how public money is being used and whether spending is achieving its intended purpose. When implementation is weak, even well-designed policies can fail to deliver the expected results.
Nigeria's current fiscal environment makes that distinction particularly important. The International Monetary Fund's 2026 assessment of the Nigerian economy said further steps were needed to strengthen the budget process, fiscal transparency, governance and fiscal-risk management. The Fund also identified weaknesses in budget credibility, transparency and reporting as continuing public financial management concerns.
The IMF noted that Nigeria had made progress in areas including the Treasury Single Account and debt management, but said more work was required to improve the credibility of the budget and strengthen accountability. It also called for continued efforts to reduce spending outside the budget framework and establish a stronger system for monitoring fiscal risks.
Those observations do not mean that the new leadership programme itself will solve Nigeria's public-finance challenges. Rather, they show why efforts to strengthen the capacity of the officials implementing reforms are relevant to the country's wider fiscal agenda.
The Gates Foundation's Senior Programme Officer, Adil Ababou, said technical expertise alone was insufficient for lasting public financial management reform. He identified challenges such as resistance to change, coordination across government institutions and the difficulty of sustaining reforms when political and economic circumstances change.
The programme also places emphasis on ownership. Instead of imposing a single solution on participating countries, officials are expected to identify the challenges facing their institutions and develop approaches that fit their national and organisational circumstances. The intention is to ensure that leadership development is connected to actual reform work rather than remaining a training exercise.
That approach is particularly relevant in Nigeria because financial management involves numerous institutions whose responsibilities must work together. Ministries responsible for finance and budgeting, revenue authorities, treasuries, auditors and other public institutions all play different roles in the financial system. Weak coordination between them can make even well-intentioned reforms difficult to implement effectively.
The wider programme has already produced examples that its organisers say demonstrate how leadership development can influence institutional practice. ACBF reported changes among participants in countries including Kenya, Senegal, Ghana and Zimbabwe, ranging from stronger collaboration and delegation to improved communication and efforts to make financial information more accessible. An external evaluation of the programme is also underway.
For Nigeria, the more important test will be whether similar improvements can translate into stronger institutions and better financial outcomes. Training senior officials is only the first step. Its value will ultimately be judged by whether participants can use the skills gained to improve the way reforms are designed, coordinated and implemented.
That distinction matters because public financial management has a direct connection to the government's ability to provide services. Decisions about revenue collection, budgeting and expenditure affect the resources available for infrastructure, healthcare, education, social protection and other public priorities.
The IMF has similarly stressed that improving public financial management and transparency is essential for Nigeria to create fiscal space and contain risks. It has pointed to stronger budget processes, improved reporting, better fiscal-risk management and greater transparency as areas where further progress is needed.
The leadership component therefore complements, rather than replaces, Nigeria's broader financial reforms. New systems can improve how information is collected and managed, while stronger technical rules can improve controls. But officials still have to coordinate the reforms, persuade institutions to adopt them and ensure that changes survive beyond individual officeholders.
This is also why the programme's emphasis on peer learning could be significant. Officials from different African countries can compare how similar problems have been approached, identify practices that may be adaptable to their own institutions and build professional networks that continue beyond the programme.
For Nigeria, such networks could be useful as the country continues to modernise its financial systems and strengthen accountability. However, the ultimate measure of success will remain domestic: whether reforms lead to more credible budgets, better financial reporting, stronger expenditure controls and more effective management of public resources.
The government is therefore entering the programme with both an opportunity and a responsibility. The opportunity is to strengthen the leadership capacity of officials working directly on financial reforms. The responsibility is to ensure that the knowledge and experience gained are carried back into government institutions and translated into practical improvements.
Nigeria's participation also reflects a broader shift in the way public-sector reform is being approached across Africa. Technical competence remains essential, but reform leaders increasingly need the ability to manage people, institutions and competing interests while maintaining focus on long-term objectives.
For Arteta's Arsenal, the challenge after a strong start is maintaining performance across an entire season. For Nigeria's public-finance reformers, the challenge is similarly not simply launching another programme, but turning institutional improvements into sustained results.
The new initiative will not by itself resolve the country's fiscal pressures or weaknesses in public financial management. What it can provide is a stronger pool of officials capable of leading the reforms already underway.
If that leadership capacity is successfully translated into better implementation, stronger coordination and more accountable financial management, Nigeria's participation could become more than another capacity-building exercise. It could contribute to the institutional changes needed to make public resources work more effectively for the country.
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