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South Africa remains the anchor public market for the continent, but performance is often driven by a mix of global commodities, domestic power and infrastructure constraints, and the profits durability of banks and consumer groups. The market is usually read through mining and resource prices, domestic rates and the rand, and whether structural bottlenecks are easing enough to support local cyclicals and confidence.
Regional map
Start here
You do not need a finance background. Start with the essentials, then go deeper only where useful.
Use the key figures to see the country’s size, currency and current economic backdrop.
Pick one variable at a time and see how it has changed over time.
The final cards explain the few forces that can move companies and the local market.
Key facts
Capital
Currency
Primary exchange
Central bank
Region
Time zone
Source: Statistics South Africa,
Country dashboard
Africa's deepest listed market, shaped by mining, financials, power constraints, and the domestic rate cycle.
Macro explorer
Click an indicator to open a focused read instead of scanning every card at once.
Nominal GDP in current local currency from the World Bank. This is the size of the economy in reported currency terms, not a growth rate.
Available variables
Source: Statistics South Africa,
Trade and external position
The latest available data show exports of $127.5B and imports of $119.8B, leaving an external balance of +$7.8B. Services account for 12.6% of total exports.
This is the broadest external-demand read for South Africa, because it combines merchandise shipments with cross-border services such as travel, transport, finance, and business services.
This is the merchandise side of the export machine for South Africa, useful for judging industrial, energy, and manufacturing exposure in the trade mix.
This shows how much South Africa monetizes travel, logistics, finance, software, licensing, and other non-merchandise external flows.
Trade partners
Commodity lens
Trade in goods and services equaled 61.6% of GDP in 2024. This is a quick read on how externally exposed the economy is.
Services represented 12.6% of total exports in the latest reading, which helps show whether the export mix leans more toward intangibles or merchandise.
Manufactures accounted for 39.1% of merchandise exports in 2024.
Fuel exports accounted for 9.6% of merchandise exports in 2024, useful for reading commodity exposure.
Food exports accounted for 12.2% of merchandise exports in 2024, adding context on agricultural exposure.
Source: World Bank API: totalExports,
What to watch
South Africa should first be read through commodity prices. When this regime shifts, local how highly shares are valued and sector leadership usually shift with it.
The market is usually read through mining and resource prices, domestic rates and the rand, and whether structural bottlenecks are easing enough to support local cyclicals and confidence. That makes rand and domestic rates one of the most important signals for revising the country narrative.
The final layer is infrastructure constraints, because it determines whether the macro backdrop turns into sustainable profits support for the FTSE/JSE All Share.
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Each card opens the same country template with its own map, switchable macro variables, and benchmark view. This is the first linked network of country pages across the region.
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GDP
What This Signals
Nominal GDP is shown here in reported currency terms, so each point is the size of the economy itself rather than the growth rate of that economy. It is useful for judging the economy's absolute scale, which matters when comparing fiscal capacity, debt servicing room, and how meaningful a given policy package really is. Versus a year ago, the series is higher by 5.6%, which points to an improving or firmer backdrop on this measure. Across the displayed window, the broader trend is still upward.