Eli
Disclaimer, this content is taken from here.
Apart from some negatives, there are many good things too about South Africa:
- SA ranked 1st in Platinum output, 2nd in Palladium output, 6th in Gold output and 7th in Coal output. SA is ranked 2nd out of 183 countries for good practice in protecting both borrowers and lenders when obtaining credit for business.
- The only street in the world to house 2 Nobel Peace Prize winners is in Soweto. Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu both have houses in Vilakazi Street, Orlando West. SA ranks 7th in terms of number of Nobel Peace prizes.
- The University of South Africa (UNISA) is a pioneer of tertiary distance education and is the largest correspondence university in the world with approximately 300,000 students.
- South Africa ranks in the top 20 countries for agricultural output, first for regulation of securities exchanges, second in availability of financial services and second in the soundness of its banks.
Other top things include: - No other country of our size and economic ranking has produced as many globally successful Fortune 500 companies.
- Cape Town has the fifth-best blue sky in the world according to the UK's National Physical Laboratory. South Africa houses one of the five largest telescopes in the world at Sutherland in the Karoo.
- South Africa is the first, and to date only, country to build nuclear weapons and then voluntarily dismantle its entire nuclear weapons programme.
- South African Breweries is the 2nd largest brewer in the world and has a brewing presence in more than 40 countries. SA also ranks 18th in terms of beer consumption (China 1; USA 2; Russia 3; Brazil 4 and Germany 5).
- The Kruger National Park has the most innovative management of a national park anywhere in the world - and is the world's most profitable game park.
- The Cape Peninsula contains more species of plants per hectare than any other area of the world.
- South Africa is the only African country that is a member of the G20 and ranks 4th overall on the 2012 Ibrahim Index which measures the quality of African governance, Mauritius, Cape Verde and Botswana took the first three places out of 52. Nigeria was ranked 39. "Personal satisfaction" with the SA's democracy rose from 49% in 2008 to 60% in 2011.
- South Africa ranks 4th out of 45 countries in the "Big Mac Index 2012". A Big Mac would set you back double in Australia what it will here, and more than triple in Switzerland.
- South Africa is ranked 17th out of a total of 145 economies in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2015, ahead of many developed nations, including, the UK (18th), United States (28), Canada (30), Australia (36) and France (57).
- Cape Town was named the top tourist destination in the world in the 2016 Traveler’s Choice Destinations awards.
- South Africa exported 277,844 vehicles in 2012, the second highest annual export figure on record. SA ranks 28th in terms of number of cars produced and 18th in terms of number of cars sold.
- South Africa ranks 24th out of 192 countries in the Economist’s "Largest Gold Reserves" Index. It ranks 32nd out of 165 countries in terms of the size of its US$ reserves, ahead of Australia, Sweden and Chile. The USA ranks 17th, the UK 23rd, China is ranked 1st.
- South Africa is ranked among the top 5 countries in the world in respect of tourism growth (growing at 3 times the global average). Table Mountain was inaugurated as one of the New 7 Wonders of Nature in 2012. South Africa was the first African country to host the FIFA Soccer World Cup in 2010.
- It is only the second country in the world to have hosted the Cricket, Rugby Union and Soccer World Cups.
- Since 1994, 435 houses have been built each day for the poor.
- SA 53 million active cell phones (population 53 million) – ranking in the top 5 globally in terms of cell phone coverage.
"South Africans have invented some pretty impressive things. The CAT scanner. The full body scanner. The Kreepy Krauly. Pratley’s Putty. Dolosse. The speed gun. To name a few.
The first heart transplant was performed by Dr Chris Barnard. We have the largest hospital in Africa and the 3rd biggest in the world.
There are many more examples of firsts. The fields of science and technology are probably the best examples of firsts because no one can ever push them into 2nd place", says Marion Friedenthal from Quora.
I add:
- Hluhluwe is the second oldest park in the world, its size is 96000 hectares (960 square kilometers) that's the same size as Netherlands Antilles while Hong Kong is 1104 square kilometers. Kruger is one of the largest park in Africa, "The Kruger National Park is the largest game reserve in South Africa and one of the world's biggest wildlife sanctuaries. It is approximately the same size as Israel or Wales and covers 20,720 square kilometres." Note that The Selous Game Reserve in Tanzania is the biggest game reserve in Africa, covering a vast area of about 54,600 square kilometres, putting it at 1.5 times the size of Belgium!
- Frontier in many science fields, as evidenced by the facts above, South Africa researchers and students champion the world in many fields, see for example, south-africa-students-retains-supercomp ... tates-5802 south-african-teens-flying-self-assembl ... frica-6053 and university-of-kwazulu-natal-students-breakthroughs-5801
- Several prestigious South Africa Universities, such as KwaZulu-Natal offer free education at a postgraduate level - Masters and PhD.
- World class road, water and electrical infrastructures.
- Beautiful beaches, and a lot of world class tourist destinations.
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