Trade, industry & competition deputy minister Andrew Whitfield says South Africa seeks support from the Group of Twenty (G20) for the pan-African free-trade area that breaks down trade barriers and facilitates the free movement of goods and services.
“The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) has the power to transform the continent’s economic and social landscape. South Africa will seek the G20’s support for the implementation of the AfCFTA, in particular the adjustment fund,” he said.
“These areas are essential to ensuring that our global economy is more inclusive and responsive to the needs of all nations, particularly developing countries.”
The AfCTA’s $1bn (R18.23bn) adjustment fund was established in 2023 to assist African governments and private actors to trade under preferential tariffs on the continent and is due to begin disbursements this year.
Whitfield was speaking this week during the first day of the G20 trade and investment working group meetings. The meetings, which take place virtually over two days, will focus on trade and inclusive growth, a responsive trade agenda to address global commons, green industrialisation and the reform of the World Trade Organisation, the department of trade, industry & competition said.
Whitfield's comments come as President Donald Trump's antagonistic stance towards global trade has caused concern among South African policymakers that the country will have to reset its trade relations with the US.
Business Day previously reported that the government is devising a resilience strategy to lessen the blow of Trump’s actions by diversifying its export markets.
The US is South Africa's second-largest trading partner behind China. It mostly exports manufactured goods to the US in sectors such as minerals and metals, petroleum, transport and textiles.
A particularly worrisome prospect is the lack of multilateral solutions and co-operative approaches and widening punitive approaches to addressing the issues of global commons and the rise in risks of fragmentation of international trade in the context of the transition to cleaner energy sources
— Andrew Whitfield, trade, industry & competition deputy minister
The US allocated $440m (R8.02bn) in aid to South Africa in 2023, the latest year for which US government figures are available, of which $364m (R6.64bn) went to health. The aid has now been halted by the Trump administration, which has accused Pretoria of siding with Washington’s adversaries and human rights abuses against white Afrikaners, which the government has denied.
During a meeting of parliament’s portfolio committee, held before the G20 trade meetings on Tuesday, Whitfield said South Africa should cautiously manage its handover of the G20 presidency to the US as relations between the two countries continue to deteriorate.
The Trump administration, which is due to take over the presidency of the G20 at the end of the year, has so far snubbed two high-level meetings of the multilateral platform held in February, with secretary of state Marco Rubio and Treasury secretary Scott Bessent opting to send junior officials instead.
However, Whitfield said all was not lost between the two countries as there were still discussions among officials at technical and business levels in the lead-up to the heads of state summit in Johannesburg in November.
“The US continues to participate in the G20 at a technical level,” he said.
He added that the engagements would feed into the political level to ensure that the handover of the G20 presidency is seamless at the end of the year.
“A particularly worrisome prospect is the lack of multilateral solutions and co-operative approaches and widening punitive approaches to addressing the issues of global commons and the rise in risks of fragmentation of international trade in the context of the transition to cleaner energy sources,” he said.
“We need to ensure that trade and climate-environmental policies [are] mutually supportive and consistent with World Trade Organisation principles that contribute to the objectives of sustainable development. Mobilising support and resources to tackle the internal disparities driven by the uneven distributional effects of trade and globalisation is critical.”
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