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South Africa is a country on the southernmost tip of the African continent, marked by several distinct ecosystems. Inland safari destination Kruger National Park covers vast shrublands populated by big game; the Western Cape encompasses lush winelands around Stellenbosch and Paarl, wild beaches, craggy cliffs at the Cape of Good Hope, forest and lagoons along the Garden Route, and the city of Cape Town, beneath flat-topped Table Mountain.

South Africa occupies the southern tip of Africa, its coastline stretching more than 2,500 kilometres (1,600 miles) from the desert border with Namibia on the Atlantic (western) coast southwards around the tip of Africa and then north to the border with Mozambique on the Indian Ocean. The low-lying coastal zone is narrow for much of that distance, soon giving way to a mountainous escarpment that separates it from the high inland plateau. In some places, notably the province of KwaZulu-Natal in the east, a greater distance separates the coast from the escarpment.

The economy of South Africa is the second-largest in Africa, behind Nigeria. South Africa accounts for 24 percent of Africa's gross domestic product (PPP), and it is ranked as an upper-middle-income economy by the World Bank – one of only four such countries in Africa (alongside Botswana, Gabon and Mauritius). Since 1996, at the end of over twelve years of international sanctions, South Africa's Gross Domestic Product has almost tripled to $400 billion, and foreign exchange reserves have increased from $3 billion to nearly $50 billion; creating a diversified economy with a growing and sizable middle class, within two decades of establishing democracy and ending apartheid. High levels of unemployment, income inequality, growing public debt, political mismanagement, low levels of education, reliable access to electricity, and crime are all serious problems that have negatively impacted the South African economy.

South Africa’s spending on research and development (R&D) as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) has bottomed out after four years of steady decline. Science and Technology Minister Derek Hanekom sees this as a sign that improvement is imminent."We anticipate that we are turning the corner and starting to increase the level of investment in R&D once again in South Africa," Mr Hanekom said on Tuesday as his department released the latest national survey of R&D spending. It found South Africa spent R22.2bn on R&D in 2011-12, or 0.76% of GDP. This was exactly the same ratio reported for 2010-11, and is markedly down on previous surveys: it was 0.87% in 2009-10, 0.92% in 2008-09 and 0.93% in 2007-08.

 Africa as a whole lags behind the world’s other developing regions, such as South America and Southeast Asia, in overall R&D spending per capita. Moreover, great disparities exist among subregions in Africa itself. According to list of Nursing journals South africa While the southern region invests, on average, more than the world median in R&D, western and central Africa present a grim picture when compared with other parts of the developing world and the rest of Africa. This intra-African inequality magnifies the funding-gap challenge. The need to increase R&D expenditures for health is well recognized. Nursing journals South africa Union has set a target: dedicating the equivalent of 2 percent of total health care spending to health research by 2015-0.1 percent of GDP and 33 percent of overall R&D. Kenya now spends 0.15 percent of GDP on health research, so 0.1 percent is a plausible target. In fact, list of Nursing journals some African countries are aggressively increasing their total R&D expenditures. South Africa, for example, will soon be devoting 1 percent of its GDP to R&D. Egypt will spend 0.6 percent of GDP on R&D by the end of 2010 and hopes to reach 1 percent by 2017.