South Africa (SA) has managed a major economic turnaround, jumping 10 places to rank 54th out of 70 countries in the 2026 World Competitiveness Yearbook.<\/p>\n
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The annual global index, put together by the Institute for Management Development (IMD) alongside Productivity SA, scores nations on how well they create a stable, thriving environment for businesses to grow and for everyday citizens to live well.<\/p>\n
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SA\u2019s leap from last year’s dismal 64th position comes on the back of solid progress in government efficiency, a boost in business confidence, and better infrastructure management.<\/p>\n
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Juliet Mashabela, a Statistician at Productivity SA, says the country is comfortably outperforming most of its emerging market peers right now.<\/p>\n
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SA’s double-digit climb stands out even more when you look at how poorly its regional and Brazil, Russia, India, China, and SA (BRICS) neighbours fared this year.<\/p>\n
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Within the BRICS bloc, only China saw positive movement, climbing from 16th to 12th place. India and Brazil both slipped.<\/p>\n
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Closer to home, the continental outlook was just as flat. Out of the six African nations tracked in the report, four took a hit with Botswana, Ghana, and Namibia all dropping down the table. Kenya was the only other African country to see any positive movement, managing to nudge up by just a single spot.<\/p>\n
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–ChannelAfrica–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":34277,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"news-type":[44],"class_list":["post-37740","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-finance","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"SA has managed a major economic turnaround, jumping 10 places to rank 54th out of 70 countries in the 2026 World Competitiveness Yearbook","published_date":"2026-06-22 15:21:25","news_description":"SA has managed a major economic turnaround, jumping 10 places to rank 54th out of 70 countries in the 2026 World Competitiveness Yearbook","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/37740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/37740\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37741,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/37740\/revisions\/37741"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=37740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}