The Sub-National Resilience Index.
Initiated by the NGF Secretariat's Economic Intelligence Unit, the SNRi is the first composite resilience index purpose-built for the Nigerian subnational context — measuring the capacity of each state to anticipate, withstand, adapt to, recover from and transform through shocks.
Resilience as capacity, not the absence of fragility.
State resilience is the capacity of a subnational government and its population to anticipate, withstand, adapt to, and recover from multifaceted shocks and chronic stresses, while simultaneously pursuing positive transformation and sustainable development. The SNRi measures the stock of these capacities — the structural conditions that determine how well a state can navigate future shocks — rather than performance during any single event.
Five complementary capacities.
Synthesising Briguglio et al. (2009), the IPCC AR5 framework and the post-COVID resilience literature, the SNRi operationalises resilience through five distinct capacities.
Foresee and prepare for risks — early warning, contingency budgets, scenario planning.
Withstand shocks without structural collapse via fiscal buffers and robust services.
Adjust strategies, institutions and resource allocations during ongoing stress.
Return to prior levels of functioning after a shock — reconstruction and continuity.
Use disruption as a catalyst for structural reform and institutional modernisation.
Seven dimensions. Forty-eight indicators.
Each dimension is internally organised on a dual axis — Risk / Exposure and Coping / Adaptive Capacity — following the OECD States of Fragility and INFORM Risk approaches. Indicators are treated as formative constructs: non-substitutable contributors to resilience rather than interchangeable reflections of it.
The SNRi supports a three-stage analytical pathway: diagnostic (current resilience profile), prognostic (scenario projections under varying policy and shock assumptions), and prescriptive (translating vulnerabilities into actionable policy recommendations for governors and partners).
Built to the JRC-OECD standard for composite indicators.
The SNRi follows the JRC-OECD Handbook on Constructing Composite Indicators (2008) — the same ten-step framework used by the Human Development Index, the Ibrahim Index of African Governance, the INFORM Risk Index and the ND-GAIN Country Index. Indicators are selected on three conjunctive criteria: theoretical relevance in peer-reviewed literature, data availability for all 36 states, and precedent in at least one established composite index.