Whereas market-based measures of uncertainty or risk have spiked to near decade highs after the tariff announcements of the Trump administration, available text search-based measures of uncertainty for South Africa have not followed suit.
The Geopolitical risk measure for South Africa from Caldara and Iacoviello, which measures adverse geopolitical events and associated risks based on a count the number of articles related to adverse geopolitical events in major US and UK newspapers, has declined over the first three months of 2025.
The World Uncertainty Index for South Africa by Ahir, Bloom and Furceri, which measures the number of times ‘uncertainty’ appears in country reports on the economy, policies, and politics, spiked in 2024Q4 (the latest available estimate), but remains below its peaks between 2015 and 2019.
