Downgrades

Since 1994, South Africa saw its sovereign risk rating — the level of risk associated with investing in a country — improve up until 2007, when Fitch Ratings downgraded it, although the rating remained at investment grade. After 2010, the sovereign risk rating declined further, adding to the country’s borrowing costs and weakening the rand. Moody’s, whose rating was one notch above investment grade in 1994, is the only agency that still has South Africa at investment grade.