In 2011, the IRD representative office in Southern Africa was merged with the CNRS office. CIRAD joined this office in 2015. The joint IRD-CNRS-CIRAD office is now responsible for South Africa and Mozambique (IRD), Southern Africa (CNRS) and South Africa (correspondence for CIRAD).

The CNRS represents almost half of French cooperation with the Republic of South Africa. France is the fourth largest scientific partner of South Africa and the second largest for projects funded under FP7. This cooperation involves more than 100 CNRS laboratories that have co-published one or more items with this country over the past 3 years and the number of joint publications appears to be increasing.

In physical sciences, the analysis of areas of joint publications shows (classified according to the decreasing importance) the primary areas of scientific cooperation with the CNRS. Earth and Space sciences dominate a cooperation covering many disciplines: Astronomy and astrophysics (21.2%) Biochemistry, molecular Biology (11.5%), Geosciences (5.8%), Biodiversity (3.8%), Multidisciplinary (3.8%), Ecology (3.8%), Endocrinology (3.8%), General Chemistry (3.8%).