Despite a rocky election in 2024, South Africa President Cyril Ramaphosa continued hi administration, which began in 2018. His African National Congress (ANC), which has been in power since the end of apartheid, remains so. The country continues to vie with Nigeria to have the continent's largest economy, and it remains the only African nation with nuclear energy.

South Africa also has the world's highest income disparity, high crime rates, a non-investment grade bond rating, and steeply dropping flows of foreign direct investment (FDI) in recent years.

The nation ranks in the lower half of the IDCA Digital Readiness Rankings. It does so despite relatively strong digital infrastructure, a legacy and function of Johannesburg's continuing status as a world financial center, and of strong economic development in nearby Gauteng Province.

But its Social and Governance scores are now below the world average, and its provisioning of sustainable energy is well below the world average. Nuclear provides less than 5 percent of its power, and renewable sources add only another 7 percent. In a nation with copious sunshine and an oceanic climate in much of it, here is where opportunities lie.

There is a lot of interest today in the nations of East Africa, in West Africa's Nigeria (and some of its neighbors), and in the separate region of North Africa (with its potential connection to Europe). South Africa seems to have gotten lost in the shuffle along the way. But with a renewed government that says it's committed to unity, a strong digital backbone and substantial upside in its ability to develop a more sustainable Digital Economy, the year 2025 looks like a propitious one in which to take another look at it.