South Africa

South Africa: Strong Governance Scores, Decade-Old Energy Production Data

South Africa's economy was valued at $401.1 billion in 2024, per the World Bank's WDI series, with GDP per capita of $6,267 across a population of 64.0 million the same year. The IMF's World Economic Outlook projects government debt at 78.9 percent of GDP for 2026, with reserves of $58.4 billion in 2025 per IMF IFS data providing a buffer equal to roughly three-quarters of annual GDP in dollar terms.

Military Spending and Capacity

SIPRI's 2025 figures put military spending at $3.2 billion, or 0.737 percent of GDP under SIPRI's own GDP series — a figure that should not be recalculated against the World Bank GDP series, as the two denominators differ. The Correlates of War National Material Capabilities dataset recorded 74,000 active personnel in 2022, with a CINC score of 0.00547 the same year. Both figures are three years older than the SIPRI spending data, and no more recent update is available in this record.

Governance

South Africa posts the strongest governance profile in this comparison set: V-Dem's 2025 data score electoral democracy at 0.743, liberal democracy at 0.633, and state capacity at 0.694. All three measures sit well above the typical range for this group, with electoral and liberal democracy scores relatively close together.

Energy

Primary energy consumption was 4.905 exajoules in 2024, per Our World in Data, with electricity generation of 242.76 TWh — though that electricity figure is dated 2025, a year after the primary energy figure. The oil and gas production figures in this record — 2.712 TWh and 10.531 TWh respectively — are dated 2016, nearly a decade old, and say nothing reliable about current South African oil and gas output. Both figures are also small in absolute terms, consistent with a country that is not a significant oil or gas producer, but the age of the data limits what can be said about the present.

Data Gaps

No personnel, CINC, oil, or gas figures newer than 2022 and 2016 respectively appear in this record. No nuclear or alliance data are present. The debt figure for 2026 is an IMF projection, not an outturn. The combination of strong governance scores and a sub-1-percent military spending share, set against a debt ratio near 80 percent, is the notable tension in this record and should be weighed with the caveat that the spending share uses SIPRI's own GDP denominator.

Sources: World Bank WDI, IMF WEO, IMF IFS, SIPRI Milex, COW NMC, V-Dem v15, Our World in Data (Energy)