The G20 Leaders’ Summit in Johannesburg in late November offered a once-in-20-years opportunity to promote a specific African agenda through the G20. The South African government set high expectations when it chose the theme “Solidarity, Equality, Sustainability” for its presidency. 

As the G20’s only African member, South Africa concluded a series of four consecutive Global South presidencies – beginning with Indonesia in 2022, followed by India and Brazil. It also concludes the first full cycle of G20 Leaders’ Summits, which began in 2008 in Washington, D.C., when the G20 was elevated to head-of-state level in response to the global financial crisis. 

The outcome is a mixed bag at best, both when it comes to the 2025 South African presidency and to the “G20 era” in global governance overall. And, with the US taking over the next G20 presidency, the worst is yet to come for sustainable development.

The first G20 on African soil: High expectations, weak execution

The G20 process gives the rotating presidencies much leeway to shape the agenda. Thus, the Johannesburg Summit was the last chance to promote a decisively developmental agenda through the G20, and the first chance to give it a specific African twist. The theme certainly hit all the right notes: 

• The quality of multilateral cooperation has significant upward potential (solidarity?).
• Income disparities between Africa and the rest of the world remain high, as they are within South Africa, which is one of the most unequal countries in the world (equality?).
• The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are off-track, with some G20 member states even denouncing the Agenda 2030 in its entirety (sustainability?). Or did the term ‘sustainability’ instead refer to the state of implementation of existing G20 agreements?

On top of the overarching framework, South Africa put a number of finance topics on the agenda that are of particular concern for the African continent, such as addressing the debt crises in the Global South and reducing the elevated cost of capital for African countries. 

But the negotiations on the outcome document were tough. The South African presidency purposefully designed an outcome document so that it could be considered consensual even though the US refused to send an official delegation to the summit and declared that it wouldn’t endorse the outcome. For example, the paragraph on the UN Tax Convention reads: “the participating G20 members reaffirmed the objectives …”. The US is currently the only G20 member state that is not participating in the United Nations (UN) process. While this approach has weakened the summit’s outcome, it leaves the backdoor open for missing countries to join once their government has changed.   

Little substance in the outcome document

The sections on debt and cost of capital in the Leader´s Declaration have been a disappointment for many, especially for civil society, which had expected to get more from an African presidency, especially in a Jubilee year. 

Although paragraphs 14–22 devote considerable space to debt, the declaration contains no operational steps and excludes measures agreed at the recent UN Financing for Development Conference in Sevilla. 

Reducing the cost of capital is mentioned as an objective – for example, when it comes to the vision to triple renewable energy (paragraph 25) where the high financing costs are a particularly severe obstacle for African countries. But the hopes that the Johannesburg Summit would agree on practical steps that could actually reduce the cost of capital, such as an improved system of credit ratings more tailored to Africa’s needs or a stronger financial safety net, have not materialised. 

The section on taxation was also a surprise. Despite expectations, also raised by the focus on inequality, the declaration makes no mention of wealth taxation – introduced by Brazil the previous year – and limits itself to OECD minimum tax issues while only ‘noting’ the UN tax convention despite many African countries’ preference for tax policy-making in the fully inclusive format that at the UN offers. 

A plethora of non-binding initiatives 

Besides the normative language of the Leaders’ Declaration, there are a number of tangible innovations and deliverables resulting from the South African presidency (see the list below). However, it remains to be seen how relevant these will be in practice, as none of them is binding or well-resourced at this point in time. 

In stark contrast to the weakness of the Leaders’ Declaration are two expert group reports that have been commissioned:

• one on “growth, debt and development”, created under the chairmanship of former South African Finance Minister Trevor Manuel
• and one on inequality by an expert group chaired by economist Joseph Stiglitz. 

Remarkably, the latter report includes an even stronger and more comprehensive set of policy recommendations for international financial architecture reform as well as the suggestion to set up an International Panel on Inequality to keep the matter high on the multilateral agenda. The idea was supported by a large number of academics, but the Summit did not yet agree on setting the panel up. The report was also featured at events held during the G20 Social Summit, the large parallel event to the Leaders’ Summit with which South Africa tried to involve non-state actors. Expert panel member Jayati Ghosh presented it in the context of a debate on fair taxation.  

New G20 processes and deliverables under the South African presidency

• G20 Accountability Report on Whistleblower Protection
• G20 Call to Action on Global Governance Reform
• G20 Compact with Africa (launch of the second phase)
• G20 Critical Minerals Framework
• G20 Food Security Task Force
• G20 High-Level Principles on Sustainable Industrial Policy for Inclusive Economic Growth, Industrialisation, Jobs and Equality
• G20 Initiative on Supporting Industrialisation in Africa and Least Developed Countries
• G20 Ministerial Declaration on Debt Sustainability
• G20 note on Special Drawing Rights (SDR) channelling
• G20 Voluntary Energy Security Toolkit
• G20@20 review
• Cape Town Ministerial Declaration on Crimes that affect the Environment
• Ubuntu Commission to encourage research and informed dialogue on global public challenges and on global public investments
• Ubuntu Approaches on Food Security and Nutrition, and Excessive Food Price Volatility
• Ubuntu Legacy Initiative by the Presidency and the African Development Bank, which aims to unlock and accelerate cross-border infrastructure projects in Africa

Sources: G20 Leaders’ Declaration and g20.org.za

Noteworthy, beyond the sections on finance and financial architecture reform, is also the relatively strong language on UN Security Council reform in paragraph 83, another multilateral body where Africa is currently marginalised. Also, the “human right to social security” gets at least a mention, creating a bridge to the UN’s World Summit on Social Development that took place in Doha a couple of weeks earlier. 

A win for (South) Africa?

While being more inclusive than the G7, it is significant that the only African country at the G20 was also the last member to assume the presidency during the first G20 cycle – at the very back of the queue. The G20 continues to be unfamiliar with Africa, and Africa is equally unfamiliar with the G20. The fact that the African Union was admitted two years ago to strengthen African representation does little to change the structural marginalisation of a continent that holds about a quarter of the voting rights in the UN General Assembly. 

The expectations were high that the first African G20 presidency ever would yield substantial positive outcomes for the continent. Bad luck for South African President Ramaphosa and his team that this happened at a time when consensus-based global governance is having a hard time. Themes of significant interest for Africa were put on the agenda, but the Leaders’ Declaration failed to win substantial mandates and commitments in any of them. 

Interestingly, South Africa did have a lot of gains. A few days before the Summit, the credit rating agency S&P Global upgraded South Africa’s sovereign rating for the first time in 17 years. A week later, several South African banks also benefitted from upgrades. This should help reduce borrowing costs for and in South Africa but it does not relieve the burden that the credit rating regime puts on the rest of the continent.

In another interesting move, the Financial Action Task Force – a body that receives its mandates from the G20 – removed South Africa from the grey list of countries with weak measures to combat money laundering, just in time for the Summit. While these steps were not undeserved, the timing - coming just before the Summit and in the context of G20 mandates to FATF - is remarkable.

One way with which the South African presidency is trying to ensure a stronger role for African countries in the G20 beyond the once-in-20-years presidency is the Africa Engagement Framework (AEF). The declaration “welcome(s) the operational structure and approach to implementing the AEF as a menu of potential priority focal areas, determined by successive Presidencies, up to 2030”. The strong role that the AEF’s design gives to future presidencies is of course a challenge. While the UK presidency in 2027 will certainly appreciate the invitation to strengthen ties and regain lost ground, especially with Commonwealth partners in Africa, the first in line is the presidency of the US in 2026, whose president does not seem to have any appetite for constructive engagement with African partners. 

Quo vadis, G20?

The South African presidency has concluded the first cycle of G20 summits. The effectiveness of G20 decisions has declined in recent years. In the early years after the global financial crisis, substantial decisions were made on financial market regulation in particular, which was the original core mandate. However, in hindsight, it has become apparent that the regulations that have been designed tend to disadvantage countries in the Global South, as we describe in our latest briefing paper on the cost of capital. 

Otherwise, the list of G20 failures is long. The failure of the two-pillar solution on corporate taxation and the ineffective common framework on debt workouts beyond the Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI) are just two prominent examples. In addition, there are hundreds of G20 deliverables that sank like a stone after the summit was over. In many cases, only the respective presidency that launched an initiative ever cared for its continuation and implementation. The list South Africa produced might suffer the same inglorious fate. 

And the worst is yet to come. In 2026, a government that withdrew from nearly every multilateral process of relevance last year is set to take over the G20 chairmanship. The U.S. State Department announced on social media that “South Africa´s woke G20 is officially over”. The presidency’s focal areas will be “removing regulatory burden, unlocking affordable and secure energy supply chains, and pioneering new technologies and innovation”.

The Trump administration has declared that South Africa will not be invited to the G20 Summit, an unprecedented step. Oxfam America in turn called on other G20 members to boycott the US-led G20, unless South Africa is invited. The upcoming US presidency has the potential to become either the greatest tragedy or the greatest parody of global governance in the 21st century – perhaps both.