Country comparison: France / South Africa

This country comparison is a concise, tabular overview of numerous data from our respective country pages for France and South Africa. There, we provide many explanations and details per country that go far beyond this comparison.

General information

	France	South Africa
Region:	Western Europe	Southern Africa
Area:	549,087 km²	1,219,090 km²
National language:	French	Zulu
Government form:	Semi-presidential republic	Parliamentary republic
Independent since:	843 AD	1910 AD
Capital:	Paris	Pretoria

Population

Details for France and South Africa

	France	South Africa
Population:	67,750,000	59,392,000
Inhabitants/km²:	123.4	48.7
Life expectancy males:	Ø 79 years	Ø 62 years
Life expectancy females:	Ø 85 years	Ø 68 years
Average age:	Ø 41.7 years	Ø 28.0 years
Birth rate:	10.90 ‰	20.33 ‰
Death rate:	9.90 ‰	9.43 ‰
Migrationrate:	1.06 ‰	-0.12 ‰

Quality of life

Values from 0 (bad) to 100 (very good)
See also: Explanations and country ranking on quality of life

	France	South Africa
Political stability:	74	41
Civil rights:	85	54
Health:	92	32
Climate:	41	95
Cost of Living:	30	49
Popularity:	71	40

Economy

Details for France and South Africa

	France	South Africa
Currency:	euro (1 EUR = 100 Cent)	South African rand (1 ZAR =100 Cents)
Unemployment rate:	8.1 %	33.6 %
Inflation rate:	1.64 %	4.61 %
Cost of Living: (USA = 100%)	96.23 %	47.12 %
Commercial taxes and contributions:	60.70 %	29.20 %
Average income:	44,160 US$	6,530 US$
Corruption index:	28 (good)	57 (bad)

	FRA: total	per 1000 inh.	ZAF: total	per 1000 inh.
Gross domestic product:	2,957,880 M US$	43.66 M US$	419,015 M US$	7.06 M US$
Gross national product:	2,991,553 M US$	44.16 M US$	387,776 M US$	6.53 M US$
Exported goods:	920,864 M US$	13.59 M US$	130,885 M US$	2.20 M US$
Imported goods:	957,717 M US$	14.14 M US$	104,806 M US$	1.76 M US$

Infrastructure

Details for France and South Africa

	FRA: total	per 1000 inh.	ZAF: total	per 1000 inh.
Roadways:	1,053,215 km	15.55 km	750,000 km	12.63 km
Railways:	29,640 km	0.44 km	20,986 km	0.35 km
Harbours:	548	0.0081	105	0.0018
Passenger airports:	61	0.0009	22	0.0004

Energy balance

Details for France and South Africa

	FRA: total	per 1000 inh.	ZAF: total	per 1000 inh.
Energy consumption:	450.80 bn kWh	6.65 m kWh	207.10 bn kWh	3.49 m kWh
Energy production:	529.10 bn kWh	7.81 m kWh	234.50 bn kWh	3.95 m kWh
Energy export:	61.41 bn kWh	906,425.59 kWh	16.55 bn kWh	278,655.86 kWh
Energy imports:	19.90 bn kWh	293,728.53 kWh	10.56 bn kWh	177,800.96 kWh
CO2 emissions:	300.52 m t	4,435.74 t	439.64 m t	7,402.31 t

Telecommunication

Details for France and South Africa

	France	South Africa
International dialing:	+33	+27
Internet domain:	.fr	.za

	FRA total	FRA per 1000 inh.	ZAF total	ZAF per 1000 inh.
Landlines:	37,759,000	557	1,472,191	25
Mobile cellulars:	72,751,000	1074	100,328,005	1689
Internet server:	17,266,000	255	4,761,000	80
Internet users:	58,329,375	861	41,574,579	700
Broadband Internet:	30,627,000	452	1,694,648	29

Healthcare system

Details for France and South Africa

	France	South Africa
Hospital beds per 1000 inh.:	5.91	2.80
Physicians per 1000 inh.:	3.23	0.91
Diabetes:	4.8 %	12.7 %
HIV:	0.17 %	6.90 %
Tuberculosis:	0.08 ‰	5.13 ‰
Tuberculosis cure rate:	37.0 %	78.0 %
Smokers:	33.4 %	20.3 %

Climate

We also provide a more detailed climate comparison of both countries.
The data for each country can be found here: France and South Africa

	France	South Africa
Daytime temperatures:	16.9 °C	24.7 °C
Nighttime temperatures:	7.9 °C	11.6 °C
Water temperature:	15.4 °C	19.6 °C
Rel. humidity:	78 %	62 %
Rain days:	8.9	4.7
Sunshine hours per day:	5.5	8.5

Native languages

	France	South Africa
French:	93.6 %	n/a
Zulu:	n/a	22.7 %
Xhosa:	n/a	16.0 %
Afrikaans:	n/a	13.5 %
English:	n/a	9.6 %
Sepedi:	n/a	9.1 %
Tswana:	n/a	8.0 %
Sotho:	n/a	7.6 %
Tsonga:	n/a	4.5 %
Swazi:	n/a	2.5 %
Arabic:	2.5 %	n/a
Venda:	n/a	2.4 %
Ndebele:	n/a	2.1 %
Portuguese:	1.2 %	n/a
Italian:	0.4 %	n/a
Spanish:	0.4 %	n/a
Turkish:	0.4 %	n/a
other:	1.5 %	2.0 %

Religions

	France	South Africa
Christianity:	64.0 %	68.6 %
Nondenominational:	24.0 %	15.1 %
Islam:	8.0 %	1.5 %
Jewry:	0.7 %	0.2 %
Buddhism:	0.6 %	n/a
other:	2.7 %	14.6 %

Data inventory and updates

A country comparison like this can be based on several hundred individual data items from dozens of different sources. All data are based on the most recent data available to us. Most of them refer to the previous year and are updated around March of the following year. If a country has not yet published data for the most recent or penultimate year, we present the most recent official data. Updates are made on an ongoing basis depending on the subject area or source, so there is no single "cutoff date" for this comparison. Sources for almost all data can be found on our respective country pages.

France	South Africa
All information: France	All information: South Africa
Select other countries: