South Africa continues to experience persistent public management challenges despite an extensive constitutional, legislative, and policy framework designed to promote accountable, ethical, and developmental governance. This article examines the recent challenges confronting public management in South Africa, focusing on governance failures, corruption, state capture, institutional capacity, ethical leadership, accountability, public service professionalisation, and service delivery. The article further evaluates current public sector reforms and proposes practical strategies for strengthening governance and building a capable, ethical, and developmental state. Although South Africa has established comprehensive governance frameworks, including the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996, the Batho Pele White Paper (1997), the National Development Plan (NDP) 2030, and the National Framework Towards the Professionalisation of the Public Sector (2022), persistent challenges such as corruption, political interference, weak institutional capacity, poor financial management, ineffective accountability, and declining public trust continue to undermine public sector performance and service delivery. These governance deficiencies have constrained socio-economic development and weakened the effectiveness of democratic institutions. The study employed a systematic literature review (SLR) using a qualitative research approach. A systematic search and critical review of peer-reviewed journal articles, books, government legislation, policy documents, commission reports, oversight institution reports, and publications from national and international organisations were undertaken. The review incorporated evidence from the Judicial Commission of Inquiry into Allegations of State Capture (Zondo Commission), the Public Service Commission (PSC), the Auditor-General South Africa (AGSA), the Department of Public Service and Administration (DPSA), the National Planning Commission, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and the United Nations (UN). The collected data were analysed using thematic analysis to identify recurring governance challenges, reform initiatives, and emerging trends in South African public management. The review found that South Africa possesses a robust constitutional and policy framework for public administration; however, implementation remains inconsistent. Corruption, state capture, political interference, weak institutional capacity, ineffective leadership, inadequate accountability, poor financial management, and limited implementation of governance reforms continue to impede effective service delivery. The findings further indicate that public service professionalisation, merit-based recruitment, ethical leadership, strengthened oversight, improved financial governance, institutional capacity development, and effective implementation of the recommendations of the Zondo Commission, Public Service Commission, and Auditor-General South Africa are critical to improving governance and restoring public trust. The article concludes that strengthening public management in South Africa requires more than policy and legislative reform; it requires effective implementation, ethical leadership, institutional professionalism, transparent governance, robust accountability mechanisms, and sustained political commitment. The successful implementation of public sector reforms has the potential to improve service delivery, enhance institutional resilience, combat corruption, restore public confidence, and contribute to the achievement of the National Development Plan 2030, the African Union Agenda 2063, and United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 16. The article provides evidence-based recommendations that contribute to policy development, public sector reform, and future research on governance and public administration.

The rapid advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has transformed entrepreneurial practices globally, offering tools for predictive analytics, risk assessment, and strategic decision-making. However, the adoption and effective use of AI among small and medium-scale enterprises (SMEs) in South-East Nigeria remain limited. This study examines the impact of AI on entrepreneurial decision-making, specifically its influence on opportunity recognition and decision-making accuracy among SME owners and managers. A cross-sectional survey research design was employed, with data collected from 242 respondents across five states using a structured questionnaire titled Artificial Intelligence in Entrepreneurial Decision-Making Index (AIEDMI), validated with a reliability coefficient of 0.84. Data were analyzed using Spearman Rank Order Correlation Coefficient at a 0.05 level of significance. Findings reveal that AI significantly enhances both opportunity recognition and decision-making accuracy among entrepreneurs, enabling them to identify emerging market opportunities, optimize resources, and make evidence-based strategic decisions. The study concludes that AI serves as a vital enabler of effective entrepreneurial decision-making and business sustainability. It is recommended that SMEs integrate AI tools into their operations and invest in AI literacy and training to maximize strategic benefits and competitive advantage.

This study examines the relationship between public expenditure and infrastructural development in Nigeria, addressing a persistent methodological gap in the literature: the tendency to specify functional expenditure categories based on theoretical assumptions rather than formal statistical testing of their independent explanatory power. Since Nigeria's four functional expenditure categories administration (ADEX), economic services (ECEX), social and community services (SOEX), and transfers (TREX) are drawn from the same constrained budget envelope and tend to move together in response to common macro-fiscal shocks, models that retain all categories simultaneously risk multicollinearity, unstable coefficients, and inflated standard errors. To address this, the study applies a stepwise regression approach forward selection, backward elimination, and bidirectional stepwise procedures to 35 annual observations (1991–2025) obtained from the CBN, NBS, Budget Office of the Federation, and World Bank WDI, in order to identify which categories are genuinely significant, non-redundant predictors of the Infrastructure Development Index (IFDI). Forward selection and backward elimination independently converge on an identical three-variable model retaining ADEX, ECEX, and TREX, while excluding SOEX as statistically redundant, explaining approximately 97% of the variation in IFDI (Adjusted R² = 0.9684; F = 348.238, p = 0.0000). All three null hypotheses are rejected. While TREX's significant negative coefficient is consistent with a crowding-out mechanism, the positive ADEX and negative ECEX coefficients diverge from a priori expectations and prior Nigerian evidence, plausibly reflecting collinearity-induced suppression. The study concludes that expenditure composition, not merely volume, matters for infrastructural outcomes, and recommends further diagnostic testing before treating these provisional findings as policy-actionable.

This study examined the effect of Citizenship Behaviour on Business Sustainability of Small and Medium Enterprises SMEs in Abuja, with Dynamic Capability as a moderating variable. The study focused on four dimensions of business sustainability: financial, environmental, social, and human sustainability. A survey research design was adopted, and data were collected through structured questionnaires administered to SME owners, managers, and employees in Abuja. Out of 300 copies of the questionnaire distributed, 175 valid responses were retrieved and used for analysis. Descriptive statistics and regression analysis were employed to analyze the data and test the hypotheses. The findings revealed that Citizenship Behaviour has a positive and significant effect on the financial dimension of business sustainability. The study also found that Citizenship Behaviour significantly affects the environmental, social, and human dimensions of business sustainability among SMEs in Abuja. These findings suggest that voluntary employee support, cooperation, commitment, responsible resource use, and extra-role behaviour contribute meaningfully to the sustainability of SMEs. Furthermore, the study found that Dynamic Capability partially moderates the relationship between Citizenship Behaviour and Business Sustainability. Specifically, Dynamic Capability significantly moderated the financial, environmental, and social dimensions, but its moderating effect on the human dimension was not significant at the 5% level. The study concluded that Citizenship Behaviour is an important driver of business sustainability among SMEs in Abuja, while Dynamic Capability plays a partial moderating role. The study recommended that SME owners and managers should encourage citizenship behaviour, strengthen adaptive capabilities, promote employee involvement, and support sustainable business practices.