South Africa’s global competitiveness ranking has fallen from 60th out of 69 countries in 2024 to 64th in 2025, according to the IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook. This puts South Africa below Argentina, Ghana and Botswana. South Africa’s low competitiveness ranking reflect poor scores for employment, investment, bribery and corruption, immigration law, inequality, low business efficiency, productivity and entrepreneurship, and poor infrastructure and education. On the positive side, South Africa is ranked fourth globally for cost of living and seventh for office rent, second for the prioritization of education and sixth when it comes to access to financial services.
