G20 South Africa
2025 will see the first G20 Summit in Africa, following Brazil’s handover of the Presidency to South Africa in November 2024. Under South Africa’s Presidency, the G20 will conduct its work in accordance with the banner, ‘Solidarity, Equality, Sustainability’.
In line with the previous three G20 presidencies, South Africa’s cycle will consist of increased focus on issues related to its national interest with particular attention on the interests of developing countries more broadly. In this way, we will likely see the Presidency as an extension of South Africa’s general approach to its G20 participation, which has been guided by four strategic foreign policy pillars: national interests, the African agenda, South-South cooperation, and multilateralism.
South Africa situates its presidency within the “overlapping and mutually reinforcing crises” that calls for a paradigm change to address: climate change, underdevelopment, inequality, poverty, hunger, unemployment, technological changes, and geopolitical instability.
South Africa will also be infusing its perspective on addressing common global governance challenges through the principle of Ubuntu, an African philosophy that translates to: “I am because we are” or “I am because you are”. This philosophy emphasizes the interconnectedness of individuals such that no individual can thrive in isolation. Instead, collective solutions in the interests of our shared humanity should be pursued. Ubuntu and its collectivist mindset, according to the South African presidency, is crucial to unlocking the transformative potentials of the SDGs reflected in the 2030 Agenda and ensuring that no one is left behind.
South African Agenda
The key issues on South Africa’s agenda are: disaster resilience, debt challenges with low-income countries, mobilizing finance for a just energy transition, and cooperation to harness critical minerals for inclusive growth.
Disaster resilience: South Africa has been inundated with natural disasters in recent years. Flooding affected the south-eastern parts of the country in 2024, resulting in the disruption of basic services. This prompted the government to declare a state of national disaster to access emergency funding for relief efforts. The floods were a repeat of similar floods the country faced in 2023, and forms part of the broader pattern of flooding that appears to be on the rise across the continent and rest of the world, demonstrating climate change’s marked effects on amplifying extreme weather.
In 2024, drought, arguably linked to climate change, hit large parts of southern Africa, impacting agricultural production and exacerbating hunger in the already-food insecure region. The drought was considered the worst of its kind in 100 years and prompted South Africa’s neighbours, Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe, each to declare a state of emergency. It was estimated that 68 million people required humanitarian assistance. The drought had also worsened water scarcity and hampered efforts to address the worst cholera outbreak the region faced in recent decades. With Sub-Saharan Africa being one of the most food-insecure regions in the world, and heavily dependent on small-scale production, disaster resilience features heavily in the priorities of South Africa and many developing countries, particularly on the continent.
Debt challenges of low-income states: Sovereign debt remains a major obstacle for capacity-building efforts of low-income countries. The current international financial architecture does not support a development-centred approach to debt, resulting in inadequate and delayed support to debt-distressed countries. With 60 percent of low-income countries experiencing debt distress, and African states making up 20 out of 34 of the states in distress, South Africa has identified debt sustainability as a priority on its agenda.
The G20 stands out as a leader in formalising multilateral debt governance efforts that are relevant to developing countries, and marks a step in the right direction to addressing debt in a systematic manner. However, its implementation has been slow and further work is required to iron out coordination between official and private creditors under this framework. Building on recent G20 efforts, such as the G20 Common Framework for Debt Treatment Beyond the Debt Service Sustainability Initiative, South Africa looks to advance solutions to address liquidity challenges faced by low-income countries. Of particular interest for South Africa is ensuring that credit ratings are fair and transparent, and dealing with the cost of capital. With the latter, South Africa is proposing the establishment of a Cost of Capital Commission to produce a review of the issues impacting the cost of capital for developing countries.
An additional consideration is integrating climate financing into debt management, if South Africa is to take the “mutually reinforcing crises” seriously and adopt a holistic approach to debt. In this case, major reform is needed so that debt-distressed states can invest in climate measures, and so long-term threats to economic development are not overlooked when considering debt management. South Africa can take lessons from India and Brazil to represent developing countries’ voices in global debt governance and drive reforms in the international architecture.
Finance for a just energy transition: South African President Ramaphosa stressed the need for industrialized countries to honour their climate financing commitments and increase their climate financing to developing countries. One mechanism highlighted by Ramaphosa was the reallocation of unused Special Drawing Rights to African and Global South countries.
The focus of climate financing efforts will be directed towards financing for a just energy transition, an issue with strong links to South Africa’s domestic affairs. While there is a general push to integrate climate change and economic development across many countries, the push for financing just energy transitions specifically is influenced by South Africa’s own decarbonization plans. The country has been dealing with an energy crisis since 2007, fuelled by mismanagement and corruption in the state-owned electricity provider, which also brought to light the country’s heavy dependence on coal.
In 2022 South Africa concluded a ‘Just Energy Transition Partnership’ with the EU, US, France, Germany, and UK to finance its transition away from coal. This agreement, the first model of its kind, will see the high-income countries financing the self-defined transition pathways of coal-dependent states through concessional loans and investments. It offers an alternative approach to unlocking climate financing, and more countries have joined this agreement to support their decarbonization efforts, including Indonesia, Ireland, Vietnam, and Senegal. South Africa may be eager to leverage this agreement to bring in more financing and demonstrate it as a model to accelerate climate financing to developing countries, although the partnership is still early and some observers are wary of its ability to fulfil its promises.
Critical minerals: As South Africa attempts to harmonize development with climate action, it has prioritized cooperation to harness critical minerals for inclusive growth and sustainable development. This priority follows on from South Africa’s decarbonization trajectory, which will depend on its own ability to access and benefit from critical minerals if it is to transition to renewable energy. While this is a national interest, it incentivises South Africa to “champion the use of critical minerals as an engine for growth and development in Africa”. Ramaphosa has highlighted how minerals’ extractions will increase as countries accelerate their energy transitions and emphasized the importance of promoting beneficiation and local value addition of resources so that the relationship between resource-rich developing countries and the rest of the world is beneficial and not extractive. As South Africa will be hosting the first G20 Summit on African soil, with these objective positions, the continent’s issues, and its economic potentials at the centre of the G20 agenda.
South African will also launch of three new task forces:
- Task Force on Inclusive Economic Growth, Industrialisation, Employment and Reduced Inequality
- Task Force on Food Security
- Task Force on Artificial Intelligence, Data Governance and Innovation for Sustainable Development
Other notable items on South Africa’s agenda include a continuation of the G20 Social, a forum that brings together existing G20 Engagement Groups and wider civil society actors that was launched under the Brazil Presidency in 2024, and a review of the G20’s work thus far, entitled “The G20 at 20 years”: A Reflection on Key Achievements and the Way Forward.