Bank of America says South Africa is well positioned to attract foreign direct investment through mergers and acquisitions, with international investors holding a favourable view of local companies.
Country executive Anthony Knox said SA stands out because it pairs deep capital markets with high-quality companies that have performed through multiple cycles, and that investors remain selective but keep deploying where the fundamentals hold.
Announced M&A across sub-Saharan Africa reached $50bn in the first half of 2026, more than four times the level a year earlier, according to LSEG Deals Intelligence. The bank has executed over $20bn of transactions for the region since 2015.
Interesting insights on South African M&A
The scale of the shift is easy to miss. Sub-Saharan M&A came to $2.9bn in the first quarter of 2023, the weakest opening quarter since 2003, and $7.2bn in the first quarter of 2024. Fifty billion in a single half is a different order of magnitude.
South Africa already led the continent with 35% of Africa's 2025 deal value, ahead of Kenya on 20% and Egypt on 15%, with inbound value up more than 40% and outbound up nearly 85%.
The global tape matters too: worldwide M&A hit $4.6trn in 2025, up 49% and the highest since 2021, including 68 deals above $10bn, the most since records began in 1980.
What others are saying about South African M&A
Business Day reports the bank advised on Valterra Platinum's partial demerger and London secondary listing, worth roughly $4.8bn. LSEG quotes its deals director saying the surge is not traditional strategic M&A but capital investment funded by corporates, venture capital and private equity. Ecofin Agency notes analysts partly credit Africa's positioning as a relatively neutral supplier of critical minerals and energy.
A wave you cannot ride is just weather
Read the language, because it is precise. Knox specifies quality companies run by quality management teams. Simbah Mutasa, the bank's SA head of investment banking, says the next generation of African growth companies will be technology-enabled but that innovation alone will not deliver scale, and what counts is capital with the right tenor and risk profile plus genuine regional reach. That is a bulge-bracket bank describing a very small number of businesses.
Fifty billion across half a year is a handful of transactions, and one demerger accounted for nearly a tenth of it. What is actually useful here is the criteria rather than the headline. Regional replicability with strong local execution is what global capital is paying a premium for, and it is exactly the thing most South African founders postpone because the domestic market feels big enough for now.
Building the second-country playbook early is what gets you into this conversation in five years instead of reading about it.
You might also like our piece on what separates successful startups in SA, the latest SA startup news, and our case for small business reform in South Africa.
Get more SA tech and business news and subscribe to The Open Letter.
