Mary S. Mangai

University of Pretoria | UP · School of Public Management and Administration

E‐governance is considered one of the most important factors in delivering and administering public services in modern societies. However, data show that many African countries are currently lagging behind countries in other parts of the world. This manuscript investigates how various factors, including economic prosperity, government effectiveness...

Purpose This paper aims to explore police perspectives on community engagement strategies within the context of crime prevention in South Africa, focusing on Johannesburg metropolitan police stations. The study’s objective is to scrutinise the effectiveness and challenges of community policing strategies. Design/methodology/approach Through a qual...

The city of Johannesburg is the largest metropolitan municipality out of eight in South Africa. It is notorious for its high levels of crime, with a crime index of 80.72 and a safety index of 19.28. This article examines crime prevention co-production in the Johannesburg metropolitan area. The purpose of the study was to analyse how co-production o...

This article unearths the salient factors that trap the aspiring middle class in their progression towards a stable middle class in the City of Johannesburg, South Africa. The study utilises a quantitative case study design, drawing on a sample of 449 aspirants and 578 middle‐class heads of households from the 2021 Gauteng City‐Region Observatory Q...

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, many governments opted to use agile methodologies to tackle various challenges. Policymakers did not follow the normal protocol of policymaking and governance; instead, they adopted a more agile policymaking process that deploys agile approaches such as policy labs, policy prototyping, policy stimulus and digit...

This study analysed the importance of police-community partnerships aka co-production in the City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality (hereafter Johannesburg) as a way to fight crime. A police-community partnership is a form of community policing used to fight crime to ensure a safe living and working environment for the public. It closes the...

Johannesburg is known to be the crime capital in South Africa. This hinders investment opportunities for the country and causes insecurities for citizens. This article analyzed the current neighborhood security challenges and sought to develop an innovative and inclusive model of co-producing neighborhood security in the City of Johannesburg based...

Health workers are often exposed to health risks and danger in the discharge of their duties. This is especially distressing during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study employs a multiple case study design to investigate the COVID-19 emergency management of frontline workers in South Africa, Kenya, Ghana, and Nigeria. The findings from the study revea...

Since the inception of the democratically elected post-apartheid government, South Africa has experienced growing numbers of protests about inadequate provision of basic municipal services. Recent studies have revealed that the poor performance of municipal officials contributes towards poor municipal service delivery. This article is based on a st...

The Director of the School of Public Management and Administration, Prof Margaret Chitiga-Mabugu, invites you to attend a webinar with the theme: Resilience in the wake of disasters-the municipal voice. Panel members will give expert opinions on the different policy responses from different countries when dealing with social challenges in the wake...

The urgent need to improve the quality of healthcare provision in developing countries such as Nigeria and Ghana is caused in part by inadequate financial support for Primary Health Centres. This article investigates whether coproduction by involving citizens, and asking citizens for their involvement, could provide a solution. The findings show th...

What is the current state of Public Administration in South Africa, how has it developed during the last 25 years, and in which direction should it develop further? This book presents analyses, reflections and recommendations from researchers connected to the School of Public Management and Administration of the University of Pretoria. The differen...

Although most African countries run a democratic system which is intended to be responsive to its population, service delivery conditions in rural Africa are still a huge challenge. Governments in African countries are unresponsive to the challenges rural dwellers face with basic service delivery. The challenges are currently met with rising servic...

This article examines how the practice of coproduction can be enhanced from the perspective of choosing and implementing policy instruments in countries like Ghana and Nigeria. The findings show that it is a specific combination of substantive and procedural policy instruments embedded in governing resources relating to information, authority, trea...

Mainly due to the unresponsiveness of government, the standard of secondary health services in Nigeria and Ghana has fallen in recent times. Inadequate financial and human resources are driving health professionals to coproduce healthcare with citizens and unemployed health professionals in order to meet the health needs of the burgeoning populatio...

Purpose While there is an urgent need for clean water in Ghana and Nigeria, governments lack the financial means to do much to address this need. This does not mean that improving access to clean water is impossible. On the contrary, this paper argued that engaging citizens through co-production, as is already being done in developed countries in...

This article compares the quality of service delivery in Nigeria and Ghana in the areas of healthcare, food provision and access to clean water and sanitation. Its first finding is that public service delivery in the two countries has been perceived as inadequate and deteriorating for over a decade. Therefore, this paper concludes that Nigeria and...