By Mmaphuti Rankapole-Tshifularo, Chief Marketing Officer, Brand South Africa
The score among people who know South Africa is 3.70. That number, released this morning in the Global Reputation Study 2026, places the country above the Love Mark threshold of 3.5, second in its competitive set, in the company of the most admired nations on earth. When familiar audiences hear the name “South Africa,” 84% of associations are positive or neutral: wildlife, Nelson Mandela, natural wonder, sport, culture, possibility. The internationally minded investors and decision-makers who choose where capital moves hold South Africa closer to the Love Mark than any other audience in the study.
The world already loves South Africa. What it needs is more South Africa.
Among audiences who have yet to encounter the country directly, the same study scores South Africa at 2.83. Sixth in the field. The gap between those two scores, 0.87 points, is among the widest recorded for any nation in this study. That gap is the work. It is the clearest and most precisely drawn brief South Africa’s nation brand has ever received.
For anyone who has spent time in this country, this gap carries a familiar logic. South Africa converts. It has always converted. The visitor who arrives sceptical leaves evangelical. The investor who attends one roadshow returns with a deal team. The journalist who spends a week here writes the story you wish the world had been reading for years. The challenge has always been reach. The country has always delivered on encounter.
“Each tenth of a point on the perception scale carries approximately $1.1 billion in tourism receipts and $1.45 billion in net foreign direct investment. Reputation is economic policy by another name.”
Between 2022 and 2026, South Africa’s overall score climbed from 3.04 to 3.16, delivering an estimated lift of ±0.15% of GDP. Every story told, every diplomat dispatched, every journalist hosted and every investor welcomed moves those figures in a direction that matters to lives at scale.
The Domestic Perceptions Study 2025, released alongside the global study this morning, adds the interior portrait and asks for equal honesty. The Nation Brand Index settled at 61.9, down 5.3 points from a 2024 high that carried the energy of a historic election year. The research gives 2025 a single name: endurance. South Africans are holding. They keep working, caring, and carrying their communities through a period in which the pace of change has settled into a longer horizon than many had hoped.
Let me be plain about what that portrait shows. Belief in the 1994 dream has eased from 74% to 61%. Satisfaction with life since democracy has shifted from 49% to 39%. Trust in government has real ground to rebuild. These are the readings of a nation that holds its institutions to the original promise, and that refusal to lower the bar is part of what makes South Africa worth building for.
What holds firm, and what the global study confirms the world already senses, is the people and the land. Trust in the private sector leads all measured institutions. Trust in civil society and the media is rising. South Africans’ trust in one another, in families, communities, faith groups and neighbourhood networks, holds as the backbone of national life. And natural beauty has risen to first place as South Africans’ single strongest source of pride, above sport, above history, above any institutional achievement. South Africans look at this country and feel something elemental. The world, when it arrives, feels exactly the same.
“The foundation is the same, inside and out. Both studies say so. That alignment between what South Africans are proudest of and what international audiences most admire is the creative asset every nation communicator dreams of.”
The momentum is real and belongs to South Africa. The G20 Presidency, December 2024 to November 2025, the first ever held on African soil, reached 77% of global audiences and raised the association of South Africa with global leadership to 81%. South Africa exited the FATF greylist in October 2025 and received its first S&P credit upgrade in over sixteen years in November 2025. The EU removed the country from its high-risk list in January 2026. These are delivery achievements and they are also the proof points a reputation is built on.
The safety dimension, at 2.58, remains the study’s lowest-rated. The evidence is direct: it is the primary factor that holds audiences back from visiting, investing and relocating. We carry that finding plainly and in full. For the first time across four consecutive waves of measurement, the score has climbed above 2.5. The trend is upward. Showing it clearly and consistently is itself a brand act, the kind that builds the credibility a country earns rather than claims.
The 2026 Local Government Election brings a specific opening. In every election year on record, South African optimism lifts. Endurance is the ground from which renewal grows. Play Your Part, Brand South Africa’s active-citizenship programme, has reached its strongest awareness level since launch: 40% of South Africans now know the brand, up from 20% in 2022. The platform is ready. The data is ready.
“South Africa has earned the love. The work now is the attention of the half of the world that has yet to find it, the 2.83 that is waiting to become 3.70. Play your part in closing that distance.
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