EDITORIAL: G20 hands SA a huge challenge and opportunity

The official date is December 1, but SA has already effectively taken charge of the Group of 20 (G20) this week. This change follows the G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro, which marked the conclusion of Brazil’s presidency and the baton being handed to SA for 2025.

It is a huge challenge, but also a huge opportunity. SA hosted the G20 in 2007 in its original, more limited form as a forum of central bank governors and finance ministers. But this will be the first time Africa has hosted the group led by the heads of state and governments of countries that represent 85% of global GDP, 75% of global trade and two-thirds of the world’s population.

Hosting it is a vast logistical challenge. It is an even more demanding political and foreign policy challenge, especially at a time when global geopolitics is so fractured, and likely to become more so given Donald Trump’s soon-to-be presidency of the US.

The leaders’ summit, due next November, will be the culmination of a year-long series of meetings and forums involving sherpas, deputies, foreign and finance ministers, officials and others high-level government folk. International relations & co-operation minister Ronald Lamola said recently it involved about 230 meetings, of which 130 would be physical, hosted at venues throughout SA. In addition to the official tracks are “engagement” forums, which feed recommendations into the leaders’ summit and which themselves involve tens if not hundreds of meetings.

Lamola’s department has estimated the cost of hosting the main G20 forum at R700m, almost R200m of which is for the leaders’ summit. The total cost will be substantially higher. The year-long event is much larger and more extensive than the Brics summits which SA has hosted. And unlike hosting a big global sporting event such as a football or cricket world cup, the challenge is not just to stage well-organised and successful mega-events — it also involves shaping the global agenda.

SA has long punched above its weight in multilateral forums such as the G20, where it was the only African member until the addition of the AU two years ago. It is the last of four emerging market countries to play host — after Indonesia in 2022, India in 2023 and Brazil in 2024 — and it will hand over to the US for 2026. This is an important chance for SA to show its global credentials as well as to put an African stamp on the G20 agenda and advance the interests of the continent and the country.

Brazil has put development issues such as global food security and inequality high on the current agenda, along with the energy transition, and SA can be expected to do more of the same. But its real challenge will be to show it can transcend perceptions by some Western powers that it is pro-Russia and pro-Hamas and be genuinely non-aligned enough to provide a bridge between Brics and the other G20 members, from Europe, North America and Australasia.

Unless it can do that SA has only a slim chance of navigating the complex geopolitical tensions within the G20, of which Russia vs Ukraine, US vs China and Israel-Gaza are just the start.