Increasingly, setting the institutional arrangements for remunerating high public officeholders (HPOs) is seen as a central design issue for improving governance. In sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), recent efforts to review and revise national constitutions and/or introduce new government structures have brought this issue to the fore. Changes in these “grand institutions” provide rare opportunities to devise new remuneration processes that promote greater accountability, transparency and equity between HPOs and the citizens they serve.