South Africa

South Africa remains the continent's most industrialised economy and its deepest pool of investable capital, anchored by the Johannesburg Stock Exchange — which closed 2025 near R23 trillion (~$1.3tn), more than the next nine largest African exchanges combined, returning 37.7% on the year. The thesis for 2025–26 rests on a genuine, if fragile, reform inflection under the Government of National Unity formed in mid-2024 after the ANC lost its outright majority for the first time since 1994.

Two hard catalysts validated the re-rating: South Africa exited the FATF grey list in October 2025, and S&P followed with its first sovereign upgrade in nearly two decades. The clearest operational turnaround is energy — after 335 days of load-shedding in 2023, the country ran most of 2025 essentially blackout-free on Eskom's recovery plan and roughly 5,000 MW of new private solar. South Africa also chaired the G20 and hosted the first African G20 summit in Johannesburg in November 2025.

The risks are equally concrete. Growth was just 1.1% in 2025 and unemployment climbed back to 32.7% (youth ~61%); Transnet's freight dysfunction costs an estimated R1bn a day; and the coalition remains brittle. US trade policy is the swing variable — a 30% tariff in August 2025 collapsed auto exports before the US Supreme Court struck down the measure in February 2026, leaving a lower rate plus residual duties on autos and metals.