South Africa

The South African economy grappled with headwinds in early 2014, although it did avoid a recession in the second quarter of the year. The country’s long-term fundamentals remain fairly attractive, but the new cabinet still faced a tricky job of stimulating growth over the remainder of the year. The economy grew 0.6% in the second quarter of 2014, after shrinking by an...

Africa’s second-biggest economy and by far its most globally integrated in terms of capital and trade flows, South Africa has had to navigate challenging waters in recent years. The economy has come a long way since apartheid ended 20 years ago, with significant improvements in both productivity and capacity – and a GDP that is now 2.5 times larger – but domestic and exogenous...

South Africa’s ascent as a major diplomatic and economic player within Africa and on the global stage over the past two decades has been swift. In December 1994, less than a year after winning South Africa’s first democratic election in a landslide, the African National Congress (ANC) released a document outlining the party’s perspective on foreign policy. “South Africa is...

Five decades ago, China and Africa supported one another for national liberation and independence, building a profound friendship and mutual trust, and laying a solid foundation for the sound development of Chinese-African economic and trade cooperation.

On April 27, 2014, South Africa celebrated the 20th anniversary of the country’s first multiracial and fully democratic elections, a momentous occasion that signalled the full end of apartheid and the foundation of the modern democratic state. In 1994, newspapers around the world printed headline photos of the long queues that people waited in simply to cast their first ballot...