PROJ10030 - Champions of Change Facility (CoC) - Nigeria

The Champions of Change (CofC) facility will provide direct technical knowledge and experts to the Federal Government of Nigeria, its agencies and independent regulators in key economic sectors to enhance technical expertise within the public sector with the ultimate aim of better delivery of public goods that contribute to inclusive growth and poverty reduction. It will identify and work with champions of change in the Nigerian public sector and support them in conceptualising, designing and driving important policy and regulatory reforms necessary for strengthened public planning, budgeting and policies for better delivery of public goods and services to citizens.

The overall objective of the Champions of Change facility - a £3.5million 18-month bridge facility, will be to provide near term targeted and strategic technical assistance to champions of change in the Government of Nigeria in support of accelerated economic reforms which will lead to a modern and efficient public sector which supports better delivery of policy, public goods and services that contribute to inclusive growth and poverty reduction.

The technical assistance is intended to be highly strategic and transformative to help Nigeria spend its own resources more efficiently. This, DFID recognises would require a significant and long-term behavioural shift on the part of main policy, regulatory and political actors in Nigeria. This bridge facility will support rapid transformation in areas where feasible, while other components of PERL address long term issues. It will be directed at tackling demand led, structural constraints to include and not limited to transparent and competitive tax systems and, open and competitive trade and investment policies by providing technical assistance and research on policy priorities of reformers; gleaning on what works and using this information to inform reform on key policy issues. The facility will target and benefit sectors with potential for high development impact through contribution to economic growth, domestic resource mobilisation, and job creation.

The facility will deploy technical experts in beneficiary government ministries, departments and agencies, and regulators with a view to support those organisations identify main structural constraints to economic development, and then conceptualise and develop policy and actions to tackle the structural constraints. The development and synthesis of evidence generated will be shared with key stakeholders in the relevant policy space to amplify the need for public sector reform and create multiplier effects. The service provider will work closely with the beneficiary organisations and DFID in identifying the gaps in technical expertise in the beneficiary organisations and design interventions for tackling the needs in the most efficient and cost-effective way enabling HMG to back reform. The identified interventions will need to be firmly based on robust political economy analysis, working on available incentives of the main actors to drive change. Therefore, identified interventions will have to be demand led, politically feasible and practical with full ownership of the government and main actors.

DFID will explore options to further scale up the size, scope and objectives of this facility into a separate and/or new Programme similar to the (PDF2) Programme scheduled to end in 2020. Given that the design, development and establishment of the new Programme would require a significant amount of time, this CoC Facility of the PERL Programme will serve as a bridge between the PERL Programme, the current phase of PDF and the new scaled up Programme.