Many of SA’s foremost business leaders have invested much time and energy this year in the Business 20 (B20), the forum that brings business in G20 countries together to feed policy proposals into the G20 itself.
Last week the B20 launched its 30 “transformative” recommendations for this year, ceremonially handing them over to international relations minister Ronald Lamola to put to the G20. The grouping will spend the next few months sharing and lobbying for their proposals before a business summit in Sandton in the run-up to the G20’s own leaders’ summit at Nasrec in November.
Whether the G20 will manage to agree on a communique is still a big question. Whether it will adopt some, all or none of business’s recommendations is a question too. But whatever the final outcome, SA has run an impressive B20 presidency. Its eight task forces have produced an extensive, rigorous set of proposals on business-friendly policies to enable inclusive economic growth. National policymakers, including SA’s, need to take them seriously even if global agreement can’t be reached.
SA’s G20 presidency has had a tough year, overshadowed as it has been by political tensions over the Trump tariffs, not to mention US President Donald Trump’s bizarrely unpredictable approach to foreign policy in general and to SA in particular. It’s tough hosting the G20 these days in any event because the agenda, which originally focused on stabilising the world’s economy and its financial system, has now ballooned to cover a vast array of global issues.
But the B20 has made sure to steer well clear of politics, and the political and other tensions of the G20 have been largely absent. The strong relationships SA’s B20 has built with its counterparts across the other G20 members including the US bode well for taking its work forward. Though US President Donald Trump has now confirmed he will not be travelling to SA for the leaders’ summit, and there are question marks over whether the US will downgrade the G20 when it takes over as next year’s president, the B20 looks set to survive and thrive.
Many of the recommendations are not new. But the forum has brought clarity and focus to them and the leadership by distinguished CEOs from SA and abroad should enable the forum to influence global policymakers and power brokers to step up the action on crucial issues, especially those that need co-ordination across borders.
As important is that SA, as the African continent’s first G20 and B20 president, has put an African stamp on the business proposals. The B20 has foregrounded infrastructure and green finance issues that are so important for the continent, with comprehensive proposals on how to unblock the private investment that everyone agrees is essential.
It has not been shy to call out ratings agencies for overestimating Africa’s risk premium and to call out African countries themselves that don’t work harder to ensure they are accurately rated.
It has given prominence to the need for climate adaptation funds for a continent so badly hit by global warming. It has tackled the crucial issue of food security through the lens of private companies well placed to help. It has developed detailed proposals on strengthening integrity and combating corruption in private and public sectors. And with digitalisation increasingly driving economies, the forum has come up with a range of thoughtful recommendations for Africa and beyond.
A big innovation is that SA’s B20 has added an extra task force to the group, with Toyota SA CEO Andrew Kirby chairing the new industrial transformation and innovation task force this year. This is one to watch. Far from espousing old-style smokestack era industrial policy or protectionism of the type often favoured by SA’s policymakers, the B20 task force has led a “reimagining” to enable productive, future-read industries, based on innovation and collaboration between public and private actors.
“We hope this paper empowers leaders to build industries that serve not only as engines of growth but also as catalysts for a more equitable and sustainable future,” says the foreword to the new task force’s recommendations. We can but hope so too.
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