Perceptions of South Africa’s reputation among the Group of Eight (G8) countries were improving, the Reputation Institute revealed on Wednesday.

South Africa is ranked 33 out of 50 countries measured in the latest study undertaken by the institute, and shows steady improvement from a score of 44.27 in January 2009, to 46.70 in January 2011.

The global study measures the reputation of 50 countries among people in in Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the UK and the US.

South Africa boasts a comparable reputation to other emerging markets such as Puerto Rico, South Korea, Mexico, Turkey and Egypt.

Reputation Institute MD Dominik Heil said South Africa’s ability to break-out of group of countries ranked between 38 and 50 was positive as most countries in this grouping have major issues in the international community or major human rights issues.

Countries in this grouping included Israel (41), China (43) Russia (45), Colombia (45), Pakistan (48), Iran (49) and Iraq (50).

Canada was ranked first globally, while Sweden, Australia, Switzerland and New Zealand are in the next four positions. Norway, Denmark, Finland, Austria and the Netherlands make up the rest of the top-ten countries by reputation.

However, South Africa was unable to maintain its reputation status achieved at the end of the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

Last year, foreign perceptions of South Africa climbed from 44.6 points in January to 49.11 points after the sporting event.


At that time, Heil said the FIFA World Cup resulted in foreign countries having a much more holistic view of the country, whereas, in the past, they mainly only had access to the bad news in the country.

“South Africa’s reputation among G8 countries has improved overall but has not  sustained the post FIFA World Cup ‘high’ experienced in 2010.

“This is to be expected as a solid emotional connection needs to be built on the sound reputation fundamentals,” he explained.

As such, Italy, France and Germany have a stronger emotional connection to South Africa, which the institute said could be attributed to the Europeans’ love for soccer.

However, the UK, the US and Japan have poor emotional connection to South Africa.

Heil added that while the event did succeed in changing global perceptions, more effort would have to be made to address the reputation weaknesses and customise communications to each of the G8 countries as different areas of South Africa’s reputation are important to different markets.

South Africa achieves a weak score of 57.84 in the top driver, and its reputation score as a safe place is considered poor at 37.32.

Perceptions of the effectiveness of the government only achieve a weak score of 41.6. The country scores the highest in physical beauty (72.19) and enjoyment (71.21).

However, these are only the fifth and seventh most important drivers of South Africa’s reputation among people in the G8 countries.

“This indicates that we can improve our reputation by working hard on safety and effective government. Recent gains that have been announced in safety and security are therefore really important and bode well for us in building a stronger reputation,” Heil said.

The country scores poorly in indicators such as well-known brands, being technology advanced and being a safe place.

Interestingly, over a quarter of the respondents from the G8 would not recommend others to invest in South Africa and only 10% would recommend the country as an investment destination. But there remained large percentages of neutral Italians, Americans, French, Germans and British.

Further, owing to high percentages of 'neutral' and 'not sure' perceptions, the study revealed that G8 countries needed more information to make a determination on whether South Africa has future growth potential.

However, there is positive sentiment from Italy, Germany, France and most of the G8 countries on this front.

Meanwhile, both South Africans and foreign perception point to an unfavourable business environment in South Africa.

Heil said this could be the result of the populist manner in which the country’s nationalisation debate is being carried out.

He said the possibility of any big changes to South Africa’s reputation is not expected over the next year, including perceptions of the business environment.

The findings of the survey were also interesting in terms of South Africa’s involvement in the Brics (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) bloc of countries, Heil noted.

“While it’s an advantage to be associated with Brazil and India, with their relatively solid reputations at 22 and 27 in the world rankings, it is questionable to lump ourselves with China at 43 and Russia at 45 position, both of which have major democratic and human rights deficits. While aligning South Africa to Brics makes sense economically, it doesn’t in terms of reputation factors,” he said.