Country-level green finance taxonomy standards have emerged to provide clarity on environmentally-sustainable economic activities to attract investment, protect financial services consumers, and counteract greenwashing. This paper adopts the Global Production and Financial Network (GPFN) approach and analyses factors affecting the climate change mitigation ambition level of the South African Green Finance Taxonomy (RSA GFT) in comparison with the EU taxonomy, which served as a model for South Africa's (RSA) regulators. It accounts for (i) the interplay between EU’s and RSA’s production and financial networks, and (ii) RSA’s willingness to attract European funding for sustainable development. We find that EU private investors hold more bonds in South African economic sectors with higher ambition level of greenness as determined by the South African green taxonomy. In contrast, EU-owned development banks finance South African economic sectors which have a lower green ambition in the RSA GFT compared to the EU taxonomy. In addition, South African sectors exporting more to the EU signal their virtues with a higher green ambition. The launch of RSA GFT has re-allocated bond investment, bank loans, and trade exports from economic activities excluded from the taxonomy to those which are included. Our study shows that a joint financial geography and GPN approach can explain regulatory choices in the Global South which adopt the EU model for green finance taxonomy development.