South Africa Lifts Offshore Investment Cap to 100% for Fund Managers
South Africa is eliminating the 45% offshore investment cap for fund managers, allowing them to allocate up to 100% of assets to foreign holdings under a new regulatory framework. The change is expected to materially reshape fund manager strategy and cross-border capital flow patterns from the continent's most developed financial market.
SA's Exchange Controls: the 5 trillion rand question hiding in the fine print
Close to 5 trillion rand in South African assets is already sitting offshore — not because managers wanted it there, but because Johannesburg's rules made fully global portfolios impossible to run from home.
The new framework fixes that. But here's the twist: the 45% cap doesn't disappear. It stays on the institution that puts money into one of these new ring-fenced vehicles. Once inside, the manager can go 100% offshore — but the originating institution still counts it against its own limit.
So the question for the ecosystem isn't whether Johannesburg becomes a global hub. It's whether this structure is generous enough to pull that capital back onto the continent — or whether the residual limit keeps the plumbing pointed outward.
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- South Africa to allow fund managers 100% foreign assets under new framework · myjoyonline.com · T3