South Africa will continue to ride a wave of positive market sentiment following the election of Cyril Ramaphosa as the new president but it would not be easy to restore investment credit ratings, Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba told Reuters on Friday.

Gigaba said that over the medium-term, Africa's most industrialised economy would be working "very hard" to restore its investment grade and could beat growth forecasts by the International Monetary Fund for 2018.