Overview

South Africa covers an area of some 1,221,037 km2, with a population of approximately 59 million people and is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by 2,798 kilometres of coastline of Southern Africa stretching along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans and to the north by the neighbouring countries of Namibia, Botswana, and Zimbabwe. South Africa has three capital cities: executive Pretoria, judicial Bloemfontein and legislative Cape Town. The largest city is Johannesburg with a population with 5.8 million people.

South Africa has a modern and well-developed transport infrastructure. The air and rail networks are the largest on the continent, and the roads in good condition. The country’s ports provide a natural stopover for shipping to and from Europe, the Americas, Asia, Australasia and both coasts of Africa
There is a wealth of natural resources, including gold, coal, platinum, iron ore, manganese, nickel, uranium and chromium. Historically, South Africa is the number one gold producer in the world by supplying nearly 1.7 billion oz of gold since 1871 with the majority of the production coming from the Witwatersrand basin. The basin remains one of the largest gold reserves in the world.

South Africa's peaceful and stable transition to democracy, was universally recognised as one of the major achievements of the 20th Century. The country remains the most sophisticated and developed economy in Africa and has an open for business attitude for natural resources exploration, development and mining.