South Africa has the lowest share of remote job listings in Africa, according to Remitly's Remote Jobs Index 2026, which analysed roughly 7.8 million LinkedIn listings in May. Only 17.6% of local postings were tagged as remote, ahead of Ghana on 19.5% and Egypt on 21.8%.

At the other end of the continental table, Equatorial Guinea recorded 98.5%, the Republic of the Congo 95.4%, Cape Verde 94.7% and Sierra Leone 92.4%.

The trend line runs the other way to the ranking. Pnet's latest Job Market Trends Report found remote opportunities in South Africa rose 28% in the first half of 2026 against the same period a year earlier, and 41% across the past two years. Information technology remains the biggest single source of remote roles, but finance has grown fastest, with remote openings up more than fourfold since 2024. Business and management, sales, and admin and office support are all shifting towards hybrid and remote arrangements.

On the inbound side, Home Affairs says enquiries about the Remote Work Visa, introduced in October 2024, keep rising, and director of corporate accounts Phindiwe Mbhele says most prospective applicants name Cape Town. LinkedIn estimated about 10,000 of the world's remote workers were based in South Africa in 2025, against a global digital nomad population of roughly 40 million expected to reach 60 million by 2030.

BusinessTech reported both the Remitly ranking and the Pnet growth figures, and noted Pnet's argument that remote work has moved from a temporary trend to an established part of the local labour market. It also carried Mbhele's comments to Xpatweb managing director Marisa Jacobs on Home Affairs promoting South Africa abroad as a remote work destination alongside its tourism marketing, including joint trade missions to India and China with the Department of Tourism.

Look at who tops that continental list. Equatorial Guinea, the Republic of the Congo, Cape Verde and Sierra Leone all show over 90% of listings as remote. The likeliest reason is that their formal LinkedIn job markets are small, so the handful of postings that do appear are mostly international roles advertised as location-independent.

A high remote percentage there describes a thin local job market, not an abundant remote one. South Africa's 17.6% reflects the opposite: a large formal economy posting a lot of genuinely in-person work.

The number worth watching is Pnet's 28%, because it measures local employers changing how they hire rather than a ratio of one thing to another. Finance quadrupling since 2024 matters more for technical and professional talent with global options than any league table position.

You might also like our piece on why the SA 5G coverage gap still limits where you can work from, how the SA BPO sector faces automation pressure on the same skills, and what the Big Mac Index rand figure says about the local cost advantage.

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