The best countries in the world – and where South Africa fits in

The report uses a survey of more than 17,000 participants to try to conceive how nations are perceived on a global scale. The results are based on a variety of metrics, with a wide array of criteria ranging from economic influence and business environment to quality of life and social purpose.

While Switzerland retained the overall top spot, it dropped to sixth from its previous gold medal position in terms of quality of life. Sweden took this category’s top spot, followed by Norway and then Canada. Quality of life measures a country’s broad access to food, housing, quality education, health care and employment.

Another metric is labelled as ‘open for business’. This determines how business-friendly a nation is based on the balance between stability and expense. Switzerland takes this category’s top spot, followed by Luxembourg and then Sweden.

The next category, entrepreneurship, involves the countries that are seen as “innovative with enterprising citizens.” The epicentre of hustle culture, the United States, ranked first – with Germany and Japan hot on its heels.

Overall, Canada shifted up one spot to second compared to last year’s rankings, and Sweden rose two spots to find itself third. Notable overall drops in the top ten were seen by Germany, which went from second to seventh, and the United States, going from fourth to fifth.

The following indicates the top ten in the overall rankings, as well as some of the positionings within the various criteria:

South Africa

South Africa is ranked 46 out of 87 countries (42 in 2022) – finding itself ranking poorly in open for business (79/87) and quality of life (55/87).

However, South Africa’s strengths were noted in heritage (shaping history with its culture), movers (how prepared it is to weather challenges posed by the global economy) and adventure (level of adventure based on an equally weighted average of scores from six attributes related to adventure within a country: friendly, fun, good for tourism, pleasant, climate and scenic).