How South Africa used the ‘G20 megaphone’ to put critical issues on the global stage

The headlines ahead of the G20 Leaders’ Summit in Johannesburg have been dominated by the US’s attacks on President Cyril Ramaphosa’s G20 priorities and even South Africa’s core agenda of solidarity, equality and sustainability – and its push for a formal Leaders’ Declaration.

Nevertheless, South Africa has used its G20 presidency to shine a spotlight on some critical global issues such as debt and in­equality, which could evolve into the country’s – and Ramaphosa’s – greatest G20 legacy, regardless of the highly contested formal outcome of the summit.

South Africa has battled to persuade other G20 members to adopt its proposed G20 Leaders’ Declaration after the US pulled out completely from the summit and said it would block any outcome framed as a consensus G20 position, reported Bloomberg.

Yet South Africa has succeeded to a degree in putting critical development issues that are particularly important for Africa on the global agenda.

Pushing Africa’s priorities

Throughout its presidency, South Africa championed four key themes: ensuring debt sustainability; strengthening disaster resilience and response; mobilising finance for a just energy transition; and leveraging critical minerals for inclusive growth.

Gilad Isaacs, executive director of the Institute for Economic Justice (IEJ), a policy think-tank in Johannesburg, cited two reports that have become flagship achievements. They are a major global inequality report produced by a committee under the leadership of Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize for Economics laureate, and a high-level African debt report from an expert panel headed by former finance minister Trevor Manuel.

Neither panel was part of official G20 structures or working groups, Isaacs noted, but Pretoria used the platform to elevate them, giving them global visibility and political momentum. In both cases, the government realised – though “a bit late in the day” – that it could use the “G20 megaphone” to draw global attention to issues of particular importance to Africa and the developing world, he added.

Ramaphosa, in a G20 research group publication that was published shortly before the Johannesburg Leaders’ Summit, said: “The challenges confronting the world can only be resolved through cooperation, collaboration and partnership.

“South Africa has sought to play a bridge-building role during its presidency, addressing geopolitical tensions in an effort to reach consensus on the G20’s priorities and deliverables. We believe we can deliver a transformative legacy for the African continent, the Global South and the global community of nations.”

Read more: Trump's G20 boycott could propel Ramaphosa and Lamola into leadership spotlight

Pauline Bax, Africa deputy programme director at the International Crisis Group, said Ramaphosa’s agenda might actually benefit from the US boycott. “The US boycott of the G20 summit in South Africa, the first ever on the African continent, has had the unintended effect of strengthening global support for South Africa. Representatives from a host of nations are sympathising with South Africa and have expressed irritation with the Trump administration.”

Bax said there would not be a Leaders’ Declaration, “yet South Africa has vowed to continue engaging with the US and is adept at balancing between partners.

“So far, it has made the most of a difficult job, and it seems determined to put on a show of solidarity during the summit in spite of the US boycott.”

The inequality breakthrough

Elizabeth Sidiropoulos, chief executive of the South African Institute of International Affairs, and Krissmonne Olwagen, G20 climate, energy and just transition research fellow at the institute, wrote in the research group’s publication that South Africa had set a bold and ambitious agenda for its ­presidency, which was “unlikely to be realised in practice”.

“However, the presidency and the summit will raise the awareness and global discourse on matters that are crucial to Africa’s development, helping to shape the narrative and laying the foundation for future presidencies and other global policy processes to take issues forward.”

Isaacs said the Stiglitz panel report was the first time that inequality had been made a key policy issue at the G20 – though Brazil’s presidency last year had touched on it in its report on taxing the superrich.

The Stiglitz panel included several recommendations, including one to establish an independent expert panel on inequality, which would work much like the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, as an adjudicator of the scientific evidence of inequality and what is driving it.

“That’s not going to happen overnight, but if a proposal like that gains traction, that would have been whether or not it appears in the Leaders’ Declaration or in a chairperson’s statement,” Isaacs said. “If something like that happens, that would have been a significant success, right?”

Read more: G20 sherpas reach agreement on a Leaders’ Declaration ahead of Johannesburg Summit

A diplomat attending the summit, who did not want to be named, said: “In my view, South Africa made the discussion more inclusive: more African countries were at the table than ever before, with Africa’s and the Global South’s priorities firmly at the centre.

“Even as fewer ministerial statements were adopted by consensus, South Africa stayed steadfast, refusing to bow to bully tactics.

“This is the message Ramaphosa wants to send to his guests and the world – this is what will define his [G20] presidency.”

Real value of the G20

As Sim Tshabalala, head of Standard Bank and chairperson of the B20 finance and infrastructure forum, put it: “The point of the B20 and the G20 is not to lead to immediate policy or regulatory change … but to create opportunities for global conversations and move the world much closer towards consensus.”

French President Emmanuel Macron could take up key G20 issues when he assumes the G7 presidency next year, his office has suggested.

Briefing local journalists on Macron’s visit to South Africa for the Leaders’ Summit and for bilateral engagements, an official said South Africa’s ambitious G20 agenda on debt, climate, jobs and growth was close to Macron’s Pact for Prosperity, People and the Planet (4P), which is based on the principle that no country should have to choose between fighting poverty and preserving the planet. Both South Africa’s G20 presidency and the 4P aimed to give every country the opportunity to have strong growth and a strong development policy.

Isaacs said, in assessing what success at the G20 looked like, that the high-water mark would be a consensus Leaders’ Declaration “that supports all the things you wanted to say”.

He added that the G20 was not just about the final outcome document, but a collection of all the engagements, meetings and declarations of G20 ministers and members of panels and committees throughout the year.

Isaacs said Manuel’s Africa expert panel report, which was published this week, could also gain traction. There was a subtle momentum in international affairs around such issues, he noted. For example, South Africa had put the high cost of capital for developing countries on the global agenda.

“Now you’ve got Ivy League universities and research institutes publishing on the subject. You’ve got different people feeling like they need to have a position on it.”

Likewise, he cited a report on barriers to sustainable industrial policy, which a group of experts launched before the summit with South Africa’s Department of Trade, Industry and Competition. “So they’re waking up to the G20 megaphone and I think utilising it,” he said.

Manuel’s panel urged the G20 to push the International Monetary Fund to launch a major debt-financing initiative, which would focus on financing rather than rescheduling debt obligations, Daily Maverick’s Ed Stoddard reported.

Mixed results

Isaacs said the formal G20 working groups had achieved mixed results. On the negative side, he singled out in particular the Energy Transitions Working Group and the Empowerment of Women Working Group, which had been fractious and achieved no ministerial declarations.

Argentina had blocked any mention of gender in the women’s group. And in the energy transitions group, Russia and Saudi Arabia had blocked agreement, “emboldened by the US’s obstructionist stance”.

“I think there’s very little to show for South Africa’s priority around climate finance and very incremental progress in the sustainable finance working group,” Isaacs said.

He cited meaningful outcomes elsewhere, though, especially in two task forces. One was on food security, where South Africa focused on food pricing and the role of financial market speculation as drivers of food insecurity, rather than a shortage of food supply. Isaacs said the rise in global hunger and food insecurity from 2021 to 2024 had indeed been driven by price hikes, which led to the task force proposing interventions such as building up strategic food buffer stocks, which governments could procure during bountiful times and release into markets when food prices spiked.

He said because of free market ideology the idea of intervening to manage food pricing globally had not been proposed before, and the task force had thus brought a really important issue to the fore, even if tentatively. This declaration would help to normalise food pricing intervention policy.

The secretariat of the African Continental Free Trade Area had already contacted the IEJ to collaborate on a project to establish how a Southern African Development ­Community regional buffer stock could help to stabilise food pricing in the region, Isaacs said. It could take five to 10 years to implement such a policy, but “there’s that sort of normalising and momentum-­building work”.

Isaacs also cited the agreement on industrial policy in the G20 task force on inclusive economic growth and industrialisation, which he said was a first at the G20 level as interventions to grow particular industries had been “globally quite a taboo”.

Isaacs said many industrialised countries were already pursuing these policies, but international financial institutions had been leaning on smaller countries not to use them. Now they could say they were acting in line with G20 principles.

So the overall picture was mixed, Isaacs said. “These are small steps in the process of normalising something. I wouldn’t [want to] exaggerate them as some kind of groundbreaking, life-changing achievement, but this is what multilateralism is, I think, right? So that’s the kind of textured assessment of the G20 that I think would be needed to really answer the question of its success or not.”

The beginning, not the end

Danny Bradlow, Professor and Senior Research Fellow, at the Centre for Advancement of Scholarship, University of Pretoria, likewise noted that “the end of South Africa’s G20 presidency does not mean the end of its ability or responsibility to promote the issues it prioritised during 2025. It can still advocate for action on some of these issues through its further participation in the G20 and in other international and regional forums.”

In an article in The Conversation, Bradlow argued that South Africa should prioritise the financial challenges confronting Africa that it championed in 2025 to “ensure debt sustainability for low-income countries” and mobilise finance for a just energy transition.

He noted that more than half of African countries were either in distress or at risk of being in distress. South Africa needed, in particular, to convince the G20 to correct the shortcomings in the common framework it had devised to provide debt relief to low income countries.

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Bradlow proposed that South Africa and the AU should create an African borrower’s
club, independent of the G20, in which ­African sovereign debtors could share lessons learned about negotiating sovereign debt transactions and responsible debt-management.

Martin Kingston, chairperson of Business for South Africa’s steering committee, said: “South Africa has showcased to the world its ability to orchestrate differing agendas, focus priorities that are of particular relevance to the continent, and take forward strategic thinking in a manner that has secured broad acceptance and developed real momentum, which needs to be carried forward.

“Whether it be addressing debt, climate change, effectively developing a strategic minerals strategy – clear and properly defined objectives have been articulated that must be achieved as a matter of urgency.

“The country has once again demonstrated its ability to conceptualise solutions across geographic boundaries, ideologies and broad areas of critical issues in a manner that has been both inclusive and progressive.” DM

This story first appeared in our weekly DM168 newspaper, available countrywide for R35.