South Africa's super exporters

Promoting exports to develop manufacturing remains a key growth strategy in the National Development Plan. Super-exporters dominate almost all South Africa's export sectors. They are the main drivers of export growth and they define the country's export structure. However, despite their dominance, super-exporters have been losing dynamism and competitiveness, with 93% of these firms not creating sufficient new high-value exports to replace those that died out during the global financial crisis. According to the World Bank, South Africa is exploiting only about 20% of its potential export relationships compared to China's and Germany's 70%. Smaller South African exporters are more experimental but are not yet large enough to drive aggregate exports.