South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa, is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded on the south by 2,798 kilometers of coastline of southern Africa stretching along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans, on the north by the neighbouring countries of Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe, and on the east by Mozambique and Swaziland, and surrounding the kingdom of Lesotho. South Africa is the 25th-largest country in the world by land area, and with close to 53 million people, is the world's 24th-most populous nation.

South Africa has a mixed economy, the second largest in Africa after Nigeria. It is a middle-income developing country with an abundant supply of natural resources and an economy displaying many world class features like well developed financial, legal, telecommunication, energy supply network and transport sectors as well as a stock exchange, which ranks the fifteenth largest in the world and a modern infrastructure supporting an efficient distribution of goods to major urban centres throughout the region.

Formerly dependant primarily on gold and mining industries, the economy is now more broadly based, with manufacturing, the largest sector, contributing to nearly a quarter of the GDP.

South Africa has now a modern, well-diversified economy in which agriculture, mining, manufacturing, commerce and a broad structure of service establishments contribute to the wealth of the nation.