The convening of the G20 Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa, has offered a momentous global stage for the African continent to set agendas on the global stage. Seizing the moment, the African Centre for the Study of the United States, at the University of the Witwatersrand, has worked with multiple partners to convene a series of activities and events. Under the banner of the Amplifying African Voices for Strategic Action, these activities include hosting world-renowned political economist Jeffrey Sachs for a public lecture on November 21, an emerging career workshop on November 24, and a three-day conference entitled “Africa in the G20: Advancing Solidarity, Equality, and Sustainability” from November 25-27. Open to the public, these events aim to amplify African voices globally to project African agency and to provide pathways for strategic action.
The overall conference goal of the conference and indeed the G20@Wits initiative is to analyse and elucidate the intricate relations between African nations and external powers, providing alternatives for balanced relationships forged in African interests. The aim is to broaden the knowledge of scholars and practitioners to understand the impact and implications of the strategies being employed and deployed by global actors, as well as provide avenues for advancing African agency and amplifying African voices. The initiative seizes the opportunity presented by South Africa’s hosting of the G20 to provide forward-thinking knowledge and strategies for Africa’s renewal across pertinent issues from the perspectives of all the African sub-regions.
Participation in the activities, particularly the conference between November 25 and November 27, will be beneficial to scholars, activists, intellectuals, policymakers, and the general populace on several fronts. It serves as a platform for the examination and multi-disciplinary knowledge production on Africa’s engagement with global actors through the lens of the G20. Speakers will interpret and offer scholarly and practical pathways for the implementation of the twentieth G20 Summit theme: solidarity, equality, and sustainability. Participants will emerge from the activities with enhanced capacity and broadened knowledge in terms of understanding the impact and implications of strategies employed by global actors.
South Africa’s hosting of the first G20 Summit on the African continent has immense implications. It signals formal recognition of Africa’s political and economic weight and reduces the “global governance” deficit that excluded Africa from having a seat at the table. It helps in agenda-shaping, given that the hosting of the conference allows South Africa to put African priorities at the forefront of multilateral discussions. These issues, which will feature in the G20@Wits activities, include Artificial Intelligence and digital technologies, the debt crises, critical minerals, climate and energy, and, more broadly, global governance.
The hosting of the G20 Summit on African soils helps South Africa to enhance not just its own capacity to negotiate on the major issues facing the world today, but also to include African countries, African regional economic communities, and the African Union. Throughout the negotiations, before the heads of state and government summit, many opportunities for African actors to engage directly with multilateral organisations, donors, investors, and rule-makers, increasing bargaining leverage for finance, trade, digital tech, and climate outcomes. The hundreds of pre-summit convenings have afforded African state and non-state actors’ strategic space to assert their agency based on leveraging their own needs. Indeed, some of the points of discussion and resolutions are likely to be sustained in the other multilateral events scheduled in 2026 and the years ahead.
Several lessons have already been learned. More will be forthcoming in the weeks ahead as Africa, South Africa, and the world look back on the G20 2025 Summit. The hosting of the Summit in South Africa will provide profound perspectives on multilateralism from not just a Global South perspective, but an African perspective. Indeed, the choice of South Africa as the host country has served as a quick affirmation of the validity of the admission of the African Union to the G20 during the G20 Summit in 2023 in New Delhi, India. In just two years after the ascendency of the AU to the G20, the organisation has held its first-ever Summit on African soil! The long-overdue admission of the AU into the G20 was a concrete institutional gain as it ensured a permanent seat representative of the continent. It meant that African issues will always be on the table when major powers meet to discuss global governance. However, AU membership in the G20 doesn’t guarantee policy wins for the continent. The AU will need to enhance its organisational, coordination, and technical capacity if the continent is to gain substantially in the G2O. These capacities are crucial if the AU and African states are to effectively press collective proposals within the G20 across global issues such as debt architecture reform, concessional finance, vaccine/health equity, and equitable representation in global governance mechanisms. It is generally held that the AU and African countries have not invested sufficiently in preparatory capacity in their involvement with multilateral organisations such as the G20. This has, in turn, led to poor conversion of presence in multilateral entities into tangible outcomes.
South Africa’s presidency of the G20 has also revealed several realities in the leadership of an African country in such a major geopolitical organisation. A key revelation relates to agenda setting. South Africa centred the themes of “Solidarity, Equality, Sustainability,” elevating inequality, debt distress, just transitions, and inclusive infrastructure as priority deliverables. It is quite clear that these issues are of little interest to several global powers, which have tacitly or implicitly opposed South Africa’s attempt to correct global imbalances. Notably, South Africa has stayed the course, with its President, Cyril Ramaphosa, and Foreign Minister, Ronald Lamola, among others, vigorously defending the need for a more just global order. While some mishaps have occurred, South Africa has shown leadership in terms of policy innovation and implementation. These include concrete steps such as creating the global inequality task force, chaired by the Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, greater civil society and African institutional engagement, and pushing for finance-track deliverables linked to development outcomes. It remains to be seen whether or not South Africa will be able to catalyse the new G20 work streams. Success will hinge on an implementation framework that relies on follow-through by members and international financial institutions.
Coincidentally, the G20 Summit is happening at a time when the world is undergoing significant flux, characterized as a “shifting global order.” Questions have arisen as to the relevance of Africa in the G20 at a time when several global powers prefer unilateralism rather than multilateralism. The practical relevance of Africa’s place in the G20 can, however, still be justified. Africa offers resources, markets, and strategic partnerships that great powers need. The G20 is therefore a platform where African states can exploit competition among powers to secure concessions across issues such as development finance and investment, and skills and technical knowledge transfer. On the normative relevance end of the spectrum, Africa’s participation in the G20 helps sustain pressure on multilateralism on issues where unilateral responses fail. Unilateral action by global powers has been evident in areas such as global public goods, pandemic response, climate finance, and systemic inequality. Even in an age of rising unilateralism, the costs of unilateral approaches to transboundary problems keep the G20 useful.
The geopolitical shifts the world is witnessing have increasingly taken the form of the Global South versus Global North divisions. How then do we make sense of the Global South-Global North perspectives, objectives, and approaches in the G20? This is an important consideration. Africa is a major segment of the Global South. This means that Africa’s positions in the G20 broadly mirror those of the vast Global South countries globally. The core divergence is that the Global North often emphasizes stability, rules-based economic models, and the proportional sharing of financial and policy burdens by all United Nations member states. The Global South, on the other hand, emphasizes development financing in view of historical imbalances in favour of the Global North. Global South countries are more inclined toward equitable sharing of responsibility in a differentiated manner that accounts for the economic and social disparities. At the end of the G20 Summit this year, analysts will be looking to see how the Global North and the Global South fared in terms of their objectives and interests. A more pragmatic approach would, however, be one of convergence between the Global North and the Global South. When analysed closely, issues such as infrastructure development, the digital economy, and climate adaptation have many overlaps between the Global North and the Global South. On these and other issues, outcomes should hinge on bargaining power, coalition-building between nations, and technical policy framing beneficial to the world as one place, the so-called planet earth!
As the South African and African presidency of the G20 wraps up, questions linger on the 2026 edition of the G20. A key question is, what are the implications of South Africa’s handover of the G20 presidency to the United States this November? Rather than continuity, it is likely that we shall see a reset in the G20 agendas in 2026. The US presidency will likely reframe priorities toward U.S. geopolitical and economic interests forged in an America First foreign policy. Some South African initiatives may be institutionalized if they gain multilateral traction from some of the G20 members. However, this is a pessimistic view because, as a global power, the US will shred any inclinations towards global solidarity, equality, and sustainability. It is also unlikely that there will be seamless coordination between South Africa and the US in the transition period and throughout 2026.
It is this and many more issues that the G20@Wits initiative will be analysing. Those interested in these issues, debates, and follow-up initiatives can reach us via acsus.research@wits.ac.za. DM
Author: Dr Bob Wekesa, Director, African Centre for the Study of the United States, University of the Witwatersrand.