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Transforming perception: Five essential steps for South Africa to revive global investor confidence

9 Apr 2025

South Africa’s big moment in hosting the G20 and B20 has been somewhat hijacked by the looming trade wars. What can we do to regain the high ground?

To my mind, there is no currency more valuable than perception. If you can change how you are perceived, you can achieve redemption.

Right now, South Africa needs to be redeemed. Businesses see us as an increasingly unattractive investment destination, and the bad press the country has received at the hands of US President Donald Trump is exacerbating the difficulties we face.

Relations between the US and South Africa have reached an all-time low and are under formal review with the tabling of the US-South Africa Bilateral Relations Review Act of 2025.

Now, rising global tensions around trade and tariffs are threatening to derail our one shot at building a more favourable perception of South Africa on the global stage: the hosting of the global business forum for the G20, the B20. Instead of focusing on ways to boost African development, we find ourselves scrambling to negotiate exemptions and favourable agreements as a 30% tariff on South Africa takes effect.

But we cannot afford to be deflected. The B20 offers us an unprecedented opportunity to speak up about what Africa needs and prove our potential as an up-and-coming, capable people. Here are five things I believe we need to do to not squander this opportunity.

Speak up about our domestic concerns

At last year’s B20, host country Brazil was able to bring its domestic concerns to a global stage. One of these was economic inequality. Brazil’s solution was to introduce a minimum tax on billionaires, a proposition that was seen as unprecedented at the time. And yet, G20 countries accepted and committed to it.

If anything, this should indicate to us that G20 countries are willing to listen — so let’s speak. We know very well what our own domestic challenges are — unemployment is at more than 40%, load shedding has returned, and our education system is struggling to produce the numbers of skilled innovators and doers to transform our economy. Businesses can propose solutions that will benefit us most. It will help them, too, and they can gain policymaking experience in the process.

Find finance for grassroots solutions

Creating employment is one thing, but creating employability is another. It requires education — and as we know, South Africa has an education crisis: we ranked last out of 57 countries in the 2021 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study, Pirls, and in 2024 ranked last out of 58 countries in maths and science tests.

There are many reasons for this: socioeconomic circumstances, a lack of textbooks, a shortage of teachers, and food poverty are just a few key areas that can be addressed. Job creation might be urgent, but at the same time, we must lengthen our event horizon.

It is ultimately education that is going to develop the people who will create the businesses of tomorrow.

This extends to improving digital literacy, too. In 2019, McKinsey reported that digitisation could triple productivity growth in South Africa.

And yet in 2020 only 37% of South Africans had consistent access to the internet. According to the Development Bank of Southern Africa, South Africa’s digital literacy sits at just 36%. These skills are critical to growth and boosting employment — and we need them now, especially if we are going to achieve the 3% growth that Business Unity South Africa, the leaders of B20 2025, expect us to reach this year. This is already going to be difficult enough, if, at the same time, Eskom is asking businesses to cut production by 30%.

We need to find ways to finance solutions — from infrastructure to education. It’s not really negotiable.

Create more trade outlets — and a soft landing if we’re thrown out of Agoa

Even before the imposition of the 30% tariff on South Africa, US congressmen had asked for South Africa to be thrown out of Agoa, the agreement between ourselves and the US that permits free trade.

Trump’s recent disdain for our country seems to be a major factor in the proposition — it does not seem like our affiliation with Russia is a central concern anymore, which was the case under the Biden administration.

Given recent developments, it’s looking increasingly like we may be losing an ally in trade. Nobody knows how it will turn out, but investing in partnerships and diversifying our trading partners — especially within the region — as recently proposed by the ministers of international relations and cooperation, and of trade, industry and competition, would be beneficial to us and everybody else recently affected by the US’ tariffs.

Long term, it could benefit us to have multiple partners rather than overreliance on a country liable to such mercurial policymakers, too.

Build trust — and boost investor confidence

Right now, investor confidence in South Africa is low. That needs to change, and it starts with improving infrastructure and paving the way for public-private partnerships. The proposed National Enterprise Bill was not passed because it did not articulate partnership as well as it should have — and I think that partnership should be at the centre of the proceedings during the summit.

It will require building trust. The private sector must ensure it is able to invest in a way that can contribute to the public good, and the public sector must use good governance to use private money responsibly, without corruption.

Investors need to have assurances that our country can perform well — and that if we don’t, they’ll be able to get their money out.

We don’t need to be humble — not yet

I often think of a story about Mother Teresa. Someone was being very humble around her, so she asked: “Why are you being so humble? You’re not great enough to be humble.”

We can’t afford to have fake humility at this time. We need to tell them that we have something special to offer — a youthful population, a wealth of resources, firm groundwork for growth.

I know we’re a capable people: I’ve seen so many South Africans come through the business school that I run — so many citizens who have come from absolutely nothing and are now acting at an incredibly high level in organisations right around the world. They’re models and symbols of us all.

Like theirs, our journey might be painful — but then, what isn’t? Like them, we might also grow. DM

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