Abstract
<title>Abstract</title> <p>A credible national examination system is central to education reform, especially in post-conflict countries trying to rebuild public confidence, ensure fair assessment, and strengthen governance. Somalia reintroduced its national examination system in 2015 and has since pursued substantial institutional reforms aimed at standardizing student assessment and harmonizing secondary school certification nationwide. This study looks at how that system developed between 2015 and 2025, with particular attention to institutional reform, certification harmonization, and education governance. The goal is to weigh up what the decade actually achieved and draw out lessons that could inform examination reform elsewhere in fragile and post-conflict settings. The analysis is a mixed-methods desk review built on secondary data: descriptive trend analysis of a 297,410-record candidate-level examination dataset (2015–2025), alongside qualitative content analysis of official records, policy documents, and published reports. Somalia moved from a fragmented examination landscape to a nationally coordinated, more standardized one, with examination centres and participating schools expanding several times over and certification credibility improving overall, though Somaliland and Puntland still run their own systems outside the federal structure. That progress has not erased the harder problems: administrative capacity remains uneven, implementation differs sharply across federal member states, and federal-regional coordination still needs work. Somalia's decade of experience offers a practical lesson for other fragile states rebuilding examination systems: sustained coordination, capable governance, reliable data, and ongoing investment in capacity are what ultimately make credibility and sustainability possible.</p>