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This study examines the institutional ecosystem of public safety in South Africa by evaluating collaborative governance between the South African Police Service (SAPS) and Community Policing Forums (CPFs). The study explores how resource constraints, institutional trust deficits, and accountability tensions affect the co-production of public safety, which constitutes a critical form of socio-economic infrastructure for communities and local business environments. Guided by ecosystem governance and co-production perspectives, the study adopted a qualitative research design. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with SAPS officials, CPF executives, and community and business stakeholders within the Bothaville policing district in the Free State Province. Purposive sampling was employed to recruit 20 information-rich participants with direct experience of public safety governance and community policing initiatives. Data were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. The findings reveal systemic weaknesses within the local public safety ecosystem. While participants acknowledged the importance of collaborative and proactive approaches to crime prevention, the effectiveness of these arrangements was constrained by severe resource shortages, declining institutional trust, and a misalignment of accountability between police and community stakeholders. The study found that competing interpretations of oversight, authority, and responsibility undermine stakeholder cooperation, information sharing, and the collective capacity to co-produce public safety outcomes. The findings suggest that strengthening public safety ecosystems requires formal mechanisms that promote transparency, accountability, and stakeholder collaboration. CPFs should be strategically supported as platforms for mobilising community participation, facilitating information sharing, coordinating local risk-management initiatives, and strengthening police-community partnerships. This study advances scholarship on collaborative governance by conceptualising public safety as an institutional ecosystem shaped by stakeholder interdependence, trust, accountability, and resource capacity. It contributes to the ecosystem governance and co-production literature by demonstrating how governance failures within stakeholder networks constrain the effective delivery of public safety in resource-constrained emerging-economy contexts.

Financial education has gained global attention as essential to financial well-being, yet national strategies often remain fragmented in design and implementation, constraining policy coherence. To address this fragmentation, this article explores the South African financial education ecosystem through a collaborative governance lens to enhance international efforts for sustained, coordinated policy approaches. The Quintuple Helix Model and the Integrative Framework for Collaborative Governance informed a deductive qualitative analysis of statutory law, policy documents, and grey literature to delineate the mandates of key ecosystem actors. The findings reveal four categories—highly formal, semi-formal, knowledge-based and informal. The article introduces a novel Collaboration Mandate Framework for financial education within a governance regime to assist diverse actors in tackling South Africa’s persistent socio-economic challenges. The article concludes that operationalizing a financial education collaborative governance regime offers a viable pathway to enhance policy coherence, strengthen multi-actor collaboration, and improve financial well-being in South Africa.