2025: The year South Africa finally turns the corner

FOR the past decade, South Africa has felt like a country stuck in slow motion: growth barely above population growth, load-shedding as a national pastime, and investors treating us like the problem child of emerging markets.

- Angelika Goliger, EY's Chief Africa economist.

That narrative is now cracking — and 2025 is the year the crack becomes a breakthrough.

Think of it as the moment the crow in Aesop’s fable finally feels the water touch its beak. After years of dropping stone after painful stone — unglamorous, unpopular, grinding reforms — the level is rising fast enough for everyone to see. And when markets see momentum, they don’t walk. They sprint.

The evidence is no longer scattered or incremental; it is converging into a single, powerful signal: South Africa is becoming investable again.

Start with the headline that made global desks sit up straight last Friday: S&P Global Ratings delivered South Africa's first credit upgrade in 19 years — BBto BB on foreign currency, BB to BB+ on local currency.

This is not charity. It is cold, hard recognition that the third consecutive primary budget surplus is real, that Eskom just posted its first profit in eight years, and that gross government debt will peak this fiscal year at 77.9% of GDP before starting to fall.

Bond yields have already tumbled and the rand punched through R17 to the dollar for the first time since early 2024.