South Africa slipped to 12 in 2026 in the Kearney FDI Confidence Index (FDI) from 7 in 2025. The index ranked 25 emerging market countries. The 2026 rank improved on the 17 rank in 2023 when load shedding was at its worst. In 2024 the ranking gained to 11 as load shedding eased substantially. The slippage in 2026 was largely due to the mining sector contraction.
Basically, the 2026 Kearney FDI Confidence Index is constructed using primary data from a proprietary survey of 507 senior executives of the world’s leading corporations. Accordingly, Kearney conducted the survey in January 2026. In other words, before the start of the Middle East war on 28 February 2026.
Respondents included top executives and regional and business leaders. All participating companies have annual revenues of R8.5 billion or more. Kearney said the companies are headquartered in 29 markets and span all sectors. The sector distribution was service-sector firms accounted for 55% of respondents, industrial firms for 35%, and IT firms for 10%.
Kearney calculates the index as a weighted average of the number of high, medium, and low responses to questions on the likelihood of making a direct investment in a select market over the next three years.
South African detail
South Africa scored highest among the 25 emerging market countries for its natural resources at 36%. This high score explains why the mining sector contraction in 2025 had such an impact on South Africa’s ranking. By contrast, China ranked the lowest in this category with only a 15% score.
Technology innovation ranked the lowest with a 19% score for South Africa. China was ranked highest with a 38% score.
Despite President Cyril Ramaphosa’s repeated pledges since 2018 to improve South Africa’s ease of doing business, South Africa only had a 22% score. This was the same score for transparency / lack of corruption.
Concurrently, South Africa did not score highly on its talent pool at 23%. India has the highest score at 40%. Consequently, economic performance is equally weak at 24% compared with top-ranked China at 34%.
Surprisingly, the quality of South Africa’s infrastructure is reasonable at 25%. This is not far away from top-ranked United Arab Emirates and China, both at 27%.
