RÉDHA TIR: SA cannot transform the G20, but it can force clarity

As the G20 gathers in SA, the moment feels oddly appropriate. A meeting that once acted like an emergency task group now has to operate in a world where no-one really leads the pace, and where power seems to tilt in a different direction every few days.

The old hierarchies are coming apart; the new ones remain unclear; and global governance has turned into a struggle of stories as much as a clash of interests.

In that swirl, Africa is no longer simply invited to “complete the picture”. It stands at a crossroad where presence can finally become power — if it speaks with clarity and purpose.

The G20 was never built to last. It has no constitution, no real machinery and no shared vision. It was assembled at a time when the engines of globalisation were seizing up and the traditional clubs had neither the legitimacy nor the tools to manage the storm. The format worked because everyone needed it to work. It was a temporary raft, improvised to prevent a systemic collapse. But rafts, by definition, are not designed for the long voyage. Once the immediate fire of the 2008 crisis had been contained, the gaps in the structure became painfully obvious.

Over the years the group drifted more than it marched. One presidency brought ambition, the next, caution. Commitments were announced, forgotten, revived and sometimes rebranded. And while the world grew more contested, the forum remained strangely stuck between two impulses: keep things vague enough to avoid confrontation, yet broad enough to claim relevance. That equilibrium held only as long as the global centre more or less agreed on the rules of the game.

That period is over.

Ambitions of leadership hub

These days, the major players don’t come to the G20 looking for common solutions; they show up to voice their own concerns and to test just how far their influence can reach. The US no longer acts like a steady conductor; it haggles from one file to the next, sometimes sharply, sometimes distracted. Europe carries weight but lacks harmony. China advances with a measured rhythm. And the wider emerging world steers cautiously through rivalries it never chose.

This summit arrives at a difficult hour. Many countries across the Global South suffer under unsustainable debt burdens; liquidity remains deeply uneven; climate financing promises rarely materialise; supply chains have become political weapons; and trust in the multilateral architecture is evaporating. The G20 is expected to respond to all this, but the contradiction is obvious: the forum has ambitions of a leadership hub but the institutional weight of a discussion club. It can highlight problems, sometimes generate momentum, but it has no enforcement arm and no binding authority.

This is precisely why Africa’s moment matters. For decades African states were treated as spectators in global governance. They sat at the table when invited, but the agenda was made elsewhere. With the SA presidency, that dynamic can shift — not because the world suddenly grants Africa more space, but because the global balance has fractured enough to create openings. In a disordered system, actors who understand their leverage can move faster.

Influencing the debate

But Africa must avoid the trap of symbolic politics. Visibility is not influence. A rotating presidency will not, by itself, realign the global order. What Africa can do — if it chooses — is force certain questions into the centre of the debate: the architecture of sovereign debt; the conditions under which climate finance is delivered; the re-industrialisation of the continent; its role in critical minerals; and the deep inequalities embedded in how global liquidity is allocated. These are not “African issues”; they are structural features of today’s global economy, and ignoring them simply postpones the next crisis.

The contradictions inside the G20 complicate this task. Rising powers have challenged Western dominance, but not in a co-ordinated way. Some build parallel institutions; others hedge; others oscillate with domestic politics. They sometimes speak the language of reform while avoiding anything that binds them too closely to one another. That makes the forum a strange creature: powerful enough to influence the global mood, but too incoherent to anchor a new consensus.

Financial governance illustrates the problem. The international system still operates on rules designed decades ago. Voting power inside key institutions reflects an outdated distribution of economic weight. Emergency liquidity depends on geopolitical comfort as much as economic logic. Sovereign debt treatments are inconsistent.

And the rules used to regulate banks or cross-border capital flows are shaped overwhelmingly by the experiences of advanced economies. The vulnerabilities of commodity-dependent states, of small economies exposed to violent capital swings, or of regions wrestling with climate-induced shocks, rarely find their way into the design of standards.

The G20 discusses these issues every year. But the gravitational pull of major economies always drags the conversation back to their priorities. It’s not malice; it’s inertia. Institutions built by a few tend to reproduce the concerns of those same few. Changing the agenda requires a loud, persistent, well-structured push.

Proper power

This is the point where Africa can truly step in. The continent now holds a type of leverage it never enjoyed in past eras, shaped by its swelling population, its place in clean-energy value chains, its mineral wealth, its growing market, and a firmer diplomatic voice.

This is not soft power. It is power, plain and simple — if it is organised. Too often, external actors exploit African fragmentation to dilute its leverage. The G20 presidency offers a rare chance to reverse this pattern by setting the thematic tone rather than reacting to it.

SA cannot transform the G20, but it can force clarity. The Johannesburg Summit carries a weight that feels hard to miss. What once acted like an improvised crisis taskforce now must operate in a world where no one truly controls the pace. It can highlight the absurdity of global rules that expect industrial diversification while constraining the tools needed to achieve it. And it can call out the widening gap between the rhetoric of “inclusion” and the reality of decision-making.

None of this ensures success. Yet it moves the burden of doing nothing onto the dominant players. It pushes them to confront matters they would normally try to sidestep. And it hands Africa something long held out of reach: the chance to influence, instead of merely follow, the speed of global bargaining.

It removes the comfort of silence for the biggest powers. They can no longer lean back and pretend the difficult topics can be pushed aside for another year. They are pulled into the open, almost cornered into facing the questions they usually soften or hide behind polished protocol. And in that modest but important turn, Africa picks up something it has seldom been able to hold — a genuine hand in shaping the tempo and direction of the talks, rather than quietly bending to decisions forged elsewhere.

• Dr Tir, an international policy consultant, is a former minister-president of the National Economic, Social and Environmental Council of Algeria.

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