65 million people, and growing well past 2050

South Africa is home to about 65.1 million people in 2026, one of the largest populations in Africa, and it is still growing. The UN’s medium projection adds nearly 14 million more by 2050, taking the country to 78.9 million, and has it still rising at the end of the century, to around 94 million¹.

South Africa’s own statistics agency, Stats SA, counts a little lower. Its mid-2026 estimate is 63.5 million, about 3% below the UN’s figure for the same date²¹. The gap is mostly timing: the UN’s numbers are a projection made in 2024, while Stats SA’s are a fresh estimate built on newer data. Stats SA doesn’t project as far as 2050, so the UN’s path is the only long view available.

Fewer babies, but far fewer early deaths

South African women now have 2.12 children on average, down from 2.78 as recently as 2008². That is almost exactly the 2.1 that holds a population steady over the long run. So why is the country still growing so fast?

Part of the answer is that the large generations born in earlier decades are now having children of their own. The bigger part is that far fewer people are dying young. At the height of the epidemic, HIV and AIDS were killing hundreds of thousands of South Africans a year. Estimated AIDS-related deaths have since fallen from 261,201 in 2006 to 74,078 in 2026, according to Stats SA². UNAIDS puts the drop since the 2004 peak at 81%⁷.

Treatment is what changed. The number of people on antiretroviral drugs rose from 1.4 million in 2010 to 6.3 million in 2024⁷, and life expectancy climbed back with it, to about 65.5 years for men and 71.0 for women in 2026².

A quarter of South Africans live in Gauteng

Gauteng, the province around Johannesburg and Pretoria, is home to about 16.3 million people, a full quarter of the country². KwaZulu-Natal is next, with about 12.3 million.

People keep moving toward the economic centres. Between 2021 and 2026 Gauteng gained about 1.42 million people from other provinces, and the Western Cape about half a million². So a national total that rises steadily each year looks, on the ground, more like a steady drift toward two provinces.

A sliver of Africa with a fifth of its plants

The southwestern tip of the country is one of the richest places for plants anywhere. The Cape Floral Region covers less than half of one percent of Africa’s land, yet it holds nearly 20% of all the continent’s plant species. Of its roughly 9,000 plants, about 69% grow nowhere else³.

Much of it is fynbos, a fine-leaved shrubland that needs fire to regenerate. UNESCO lists invasive plants and poorly managed fire as the immediate threats. Over the longer term it names climate change and the pressure of a growing population, particularly on the Cape Peninsula and along parts of the coast³. When so many species exist in one small region, losing habitat there feeds straight into the global species extinction rate.

Cape Town has already planned for less water

The same corner of the country came close to running out of water. A three-year drought from 2015 to 2017 pushed Cape Town toward the day its taps would have been shut off, and climate change made that drought about three times more likely⁴.

The city has since changed how it plans. It now assumes the yield of its water system could fall by 25% by 2045⁵, at the same time as more people move into the Western Cape. That is the clearest local example of what a growing population meets in a drying climate: more people sharing less water from the same dams.

South Africa also mines about 70% of the world’s platinum⁶, the metal at the heart of most car catalytic converters.

1.8 Earths if everyone lived like South Africans

If everyone in the world lived like the average South African, humanity would need about 1.8 Earths⁸. Each South African uses about 2.70 global hectares of productive land and sea a year, while the country’s own land renews only 1.19 per person⁸. So South Africa uses more than twice what its ecosystems can regenerate, and makes up the rest from elsewhere.

The accounts don’t split South Africans’ consumption by land type, but what the country produces shows where the weight lies. About two-thirds of the footprint of everything produced in South Africa in 2023 was carbon, the forest area it would take to absorb the carbon dioxide from the fossil fuels burned along the way. Cropland came next, at about a sixth⁹.

Still growing in 2100

On the UN’s projection, South Africa’s population is still rising at the end of the century. Growth will slow as fertility settles near two children and the large younger generations age, but there is no peak in sight before 2100¹.

That growth will be concentrated in the cities, in Gauteng and the Western Cape, which suggests the pressures will be concentrated too. A drier Cape, a water system already planning for a quarter less, and a floral kingdom squeezed by development all sit in the province gaining the most newcomers after Gauteng.