> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.businessbagel.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # South Africa now sits behind Morocco on two African rankings, and behind Tunisia on one of them too - URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/south-africa-now-sits-behind-morocco-on-two-african-rankings-and-behind-tunisia-on-one-of-them-too/ - Published: 2026-11-02T02:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-11-02T02:00:00.000Z - Description: An investment ranking from RMB and a tourism ranking from BDO both put Morocco ahead of South Africa, and Stats SA's latest count shows where South Africa's tourists actually come from. - Author: Christian Maidman - Tags: Economy, Business Bagel News Two different scorecards now have Morocco ahead of South Africa, and they measure very different things. The first is Rand Merchant Bank's Where to Invest in Africa report for 2026/27, released on 27 October, which moved Morocco up to fourth of 31 countries and dropped South Africa to fifth. RMB's verdict was that South Africa still benefits from "deep financial markets, improving energy security, and reform momentum, but slower growth has seen it narrowly lose ground this year." The second is about tourists, and that gap is older. A tourism report by the professional services firm BDO, covered by Business Day since the start of October, puts Morocco and Tunisia above South Africa on its measure of Africa's most preferred tourist destination. Business Day points out that both are close to Europe. ## Twice the visitors, almost twice the money The size of the tourism gap shows up in the OECD's Tourism Trends and Policies 2026 report, as reported by the Moroccan news site Le360\. Morocco welcomed 19.8 million international visitors in 2025\. South Africa, which was still below its pre-pandemic level in 2024, reached 10.5 million. The money follows the crowds: Morocco earned $11.5 billion from tourism, almost double South Africa's $6.4 billion. Geography does a lot of the work. France and Spain alone send Morocco about half its visitors on the OECD's figures, while South Africa's biggest sources are Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Lesotho. Tunisia, the third country in BDO's ranking, passed 11 million tourists in 2025 on Tunisian Central Bank data, and many of them did not come far either: Algeria and Libya were its main sources. ## What Stats SA counted in September The newest figures come from Stats SA, whose September tourism release came out on 28 October. It counted 835,380 tourists, meaning foreign visitors who stayed at least one night, which was 1.3% fewer than in September last year. Almost four in five came from other Southern African Development Community countries, with Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Lesotho in front. The US is still the biggest source of overseas tourists, just a smaller one than last September. Stats SA counted 27,825 American tourists in September, 18% fewer than a year earlier, and overseas arrivals as a whole were down 11%. Overseas visitors are the ones who spend more, which is why the mix costs money. BDO, as Business Day reports, puts the bill for leaning on regional travellers at R6.5 billion of foreign spending lost in 2025\. Its report is gloomier still on Asia, putting Chinese arrivals for the first seven months of 2026 at "a staggering 67% behind 2019 levels". South African Tourism, the government's marketing agency, has picked its next target, according to Business Day: a multimillion-rand campaign for Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt in Nigeria, and for Accra and Kumasi in Ghana. Its own research, the agency said, found that "there is insufficient real/authentic content available about South Africa and its leisure offerings." Stats SA's September count had 2,334 tourists from Ghana, 42% fewer than a year before.