South Africa may be a developing country when measured by data such as gross national income per person, the government of the United States says – but not when you consider its membership of the powerful G20.

The Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) this week published a revised list of countries it considers developing, or least-developed, for the purpose of some calculations on trade duties. It no longer includes South Africa among those.

South Africa is undoubtedly the most developed and most sophisticated economy in the whole African continent and only one standard economic measure, that of per capita gross income, qualifies SA as developing, the USTR says in its formal notice of the update published in the US Federal Register. But it is also a member of the G20, alongside Argentina, Brazil, India, Indonesia.

"The G20 is a preeminent forum for international economic cooperation, which brings together major economies and representatives of large international institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund," the USTR notice reads.

"Given the global economic significance of the G20, and the collective economic weight of its membership (which accounts for large shares of global economic output and trade), G20 membership indicates that a country is developed."

In considering its designations, the USTR "did not consider social development indicators such as infant mortality rates, adult illiteracy rates, and life expectancy at birth", it said.

The change means that South Africa is immediately ineligible for one type of preferential treatment over "developed" countries, in calculations around countervailing duties.

Under World Trade Organiation (WTO) rules, countervailing duty investigations are limited to cases where countries subsidise products or industries to an extent of at least 2% their value. For developing countries, that limit is set to half that, at 1%, making them less likely to attract trade-war-style measures from big importers such as the USA.

All South Africa's neighbouring countries still appear on the USTR's list of least-developed, or developing, countries.

Categorised as least-developed are:

Lesotho
Mozambique
Zimbabwe
While the "developing" designation applies to:

Botswana
Eswatini
Namibia

My country which is the wrongly perceived giant of Africa is still asleep

Nigeria is already regarded ad developed country

Looking at how well structured some states on SA are, one will wonder if they are even in same continent as other African countries.

If you exclude the apartheid, it was in 90's these white left power. They build their city for them. Mandela only came to reconcile. Our own we read small book and started shouting independence. Na here e land us

jowhyte:
Looking at how well structured some states on SA are, one will wonder if they are even in same continent as other African countries.