Building Trustworthy Public Institutions: Leadership Lessons from Abuja, Nairobi, Pretoria and Washington

When Citizens Stop Believing the System Can Work

When I work with leaders in Nigerian ministries or Kenyan agencies, I often ask one question: “If your citizens could bypass your institution and still achieve their goals, would they?” The room usually goes quiet, followed by uneasy laughter. Most people admit that if given an alternative, citizens would not choose to interact with many state institutions.

This is not merely an African phenomenon. In the United States, trust in federal institutions has declined for decades. In South Africa, faith in key public bodies has been shaken by years of corruption scandals and service failures. In Kenya, repeated electoral disputes have left many citizens sceptical that rules will be applied fairly. Trust is in crisis globally – but that crisis feels especially sharp where institutions are still young and social contracts are fragile.

Trust Has Three Pillars: Character, Competence and Consistency

From Lagos to Pretoria, trust in institutions rests on three pillars:

• Character: Do leaders act with integrity, fairness and transparency?
• Competence: Can the institution actually deliver what it promises?
• Consistency: Does it do so reliably over time, not only during “projects” or campaigns?

When any pillar is weak, cracks appear. In Nigeria, many citizens assume that “something must pass under the table” before a file moves. In South Africa, rolling blackouts have eroded belief in the state’s ability to provide basics. In parts of rural Kenya, people expect government programs to appear during election season and vanish afterwards. The result is a dangerous cynicism: people no longer expect the public system to work for them.

Character: From Personal Integrity to Institutional Integrity

Leaders often misinterpret integrity as a purely personal virtue – “I am not corrupt, therefore our institution is fine.” But citizens do not interact with personal morality; they interact with systems and experiences. A director in Abuja may be personally honest yet preside over processes that create opportunities for corruption at every step.

Institutional integrity requires leaders to redesign how decisions are made, recorded and reviewed. Kenya’s eCitizen platform, for instance, has reduced some face-to-face contact and hence opportunities for bribery. In the United States, freedom-of-information laws and open data portals make many decisions visible to the public. South Africa’s investigative commissions, although imperfect, demonstrate an institutional attempt to confront past wrongdoing.

African leaders who want to rebuild trust must move beyond personal testimonies of uprightness and ask, “Where does our system invite compromise? Where are the loopholes?” Then they must courageously close them, even when doing so offends powerful interests.

Competence: Delivering on the Basics Before the Big Dreams

The second pillar of trust is competence. Citizens judge institutions not by their mission statements but by their everyday performance. A Nigerian tax authority that cannot issue accurate assessments, or a city council in Johannesburg that cannot keep streets clean, loses moral voice even when its leaders speak of grand transformation.

One of the reasons many US institutions still enjoy relatively higher trust is that, despite political drama, a citizen can expect basic services – passports, electricity, postal services – to function in most places most of the time. The system is not perfect, but it works often enough to inspire baseline confidence.

For African leaders, the temptation is to chase mega-projects while neglecting basics. Yet trust is built when a clinic in Kano consistently has essential drugs, when a school in Eldoret receives funds on time, when a police station in Soweto responds promptly and fairly. Competence at the edges does more for trust than speeches at the centre.

Consistency: Turning Projects into Culture

Trust erodes when citizens see reforms come and go with every new administration. In Nigeria, we have had “war against indiscipline”, “service compact”, “transformation agenda” and many other branded initiatives. Each brings some energy; few survive leadership changes.

Kenya’s experience with devolution shows both the power and the risk of structural change. Where county governments have built routines of planning, budgeting and reporting, citizens are beginning to see long-term benefits. Where leadership changes reset priorities every cycle, projects remain half-finished monuments to abandoned ambition.

Consistency requires what I call institutional stubbornness: agreements that outlive individual personalities. In the United States, the professional civil service and independent agencies often provide this continuity even when political leadership swings from left to right. South Africa’s constitutionally backed institutions are designed to do the same; the challenge is living up to that design.

Five Practices for Rebuilding Trust in African Institutions

1. Make Commitments Public and Trackable

Trust grows when leaders make clear, limited, public commitments and report progress honestly. Instead of promising to “fix health care”, a ministry can commit to equipping 200 primary health centres in 12 months and publish monthly dashboards. Kenya’s Huduma Centres and some Nigerian state-level budget transparency initiatives are early steps in this direction.

2. Close the Experience Gap

Leaders often underestimate the gap between the official narrative and the citizen experience. A director-general may believe their agency is efficient because files on their floor move quickly. Meanwhile, citizens endure long queues and rude treatment downstairs.

In South Africa, some departments have institutionalised “executive immersions” where senior leaders spend days at frontline offices. US hospital systems routinely conduct “patient journey mapping” to redesign processes from the user’s perspective. African institutions can borrow these tools to bring reality into the boardroom.

3. Protect and Celebrate Everyday Integrity

Trust is also built by the quiet integrity of thousands of staff. In a Nigerian passport office, there is always at least one officer who insists on following due process. In a Kenyan police station, there is an officer who treats citizens with dignity. Unfortunately, these people are often isolated, mocked, or punished.

Leaders must identify such individuals, protect them from retaliation and hold them up as examples of “how we do things here”. Over time, this shifts the organisation’s centre of gravity.

4. Share Power With Citizens

Globally, the most trusted institutions are those that share power – through citizen boards, participatory budgeting, open hearings or community scorecards. In rural Kenya, some health projects have introduced facility management committees that include citizens. In the United States, school boards and town hall meetings create spaces for voice (even if messy). In Nigeria and South Africa, civil society coalitions have used freedom-of-information laws to demand data and shape policy.

When people feel they can influence decisions, trust is not based on perfection but on participation.

5. Tell the Truth About Setbacks

Nothing destroys trust faster than pretending that obvious failures are successes. When Eskom struggles in South Africa or when insecurity rises in parts of Nigeria, citizens know the truth from their own lives. Leaders who minimise or spin reality lose credibility.

Rebuilding trust requires a new leadership reflex: tell the truth early, explain constraints honestly, and invite citizens into the problem-solving process. This is uncomfortable in political cultures that penalise vulnerability, but it is essential for long-term legitimacy.

Trustworthy Institutions as Africa’s Competitive Advantage

For African nations, trustworthy institutions are not a luxury; they are a competitive advantage. Investors, citizens and partners all make decisions based on how predictable, fair and competent our systems are. If Nigeria, South Africa and Kenya can demonstrate that rules are applied consistently and public money is managed transparently, they will unlock levels of confidence and collaboration that no branding campaign can buy.

The good news is that trust can be rebuilt. It is not rebuilt by slogans, but by a thousand daily choices – to tell the truth, to keep a promise, to fix a broken process, to protect a whistle-blower, to apologise when the system fails. Leaders who commit to these practices may not see headlines immediately, but they will see something more enduring: citizens who slowly begin to believe again that the system can work, and that leadership can be a stewardship, not a scheme.