SA pushes debt sustainability, green financing and disaster response before G20 summit

“Thus far, we have convened 120 out of a possible 132 planned meetings [that have] taken place inside and outside of South Africa, across all Sherpa Track and Finance Track Working Groups, including the three task forces established by our Presidency,” G20 sous-sherpa Ambassador Xolisa Mabhongo told Daily Maverick on Tuesday, 21 October 2025. 

“These meetings discussed some of the most important and urgent challenges facing the global community, reflecting our strong determination to seek sustainable and innovative solutions through dialogue, collaboration and cooperation.”

Read more: G20 delivers on promise to support Africa’s economic development

SA assumed the G20 Presidency in December 2024, the first African nation to do so. The overarching theme SA set for the G20 is “Solidarity, Equality and Sustainability”. 

The year-long programme comes to an end at the Leaders’ Summit in Johannesburg on 22 November.  

“We have brought several priority issues to the G20 agenda, including issues of debt sustainability and reducing capital costs, mobilising financing for Just Energy Transitions, harnessing critical minerals for inclusive growth and sustainable development, and strengthening disaster resilience and response,” said Mabhongo.

In addition to these priorities, Mabhongo says SA is “determined to continue building consensus on key issues of global importance”, including in areas such as achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and closing the gap on development financing, issues of gender equality, and the reform and strengthening of global governance systems, including international financial architecture.

Read more: Africa’s debt and development take centre stage at G20 meeting in Washington

Elizabeth Sidiropoulos from the South African Institute of International Affairs said SA went in with a “fairly modest expectation of what could be achieved” on the African debt issue. 

“The AU [African Union] debt conference in Togo basically made the point that when we talk about debt sustainability for poor countries, we really need to rethink the entire debt architecture. SA went in there being very pragmatic, saying we’re not going to change the entire debt architecture in one year, let’s see what we can do with the common framework,” she said. 

Read more: Groups blast lack of progress on debt issues during South Africa’s G20 presidency

Meetings with world leaders

In recent weeks, President Cyril Ramaphosa and Deputy President Paul Mashatile have been all around the world, holding meetings with leaders in New York, Ireland, Belgium and Indonesia. 

Ramaphosa’s spokesperson Vincent Magwenya says there have been no meetings held specifically on the G20. But, issues of SA’s G20 have been mentioned, with Ramaphosa, at the Global Gateway Forum in Brussels, welcoming the support of the European Union (EU) for SA’s G20 priorities. 

Magwenya said: “A key issue for the G20 must be to develop solutions to address the debt burden that holds back the growth and development of many developing countries, especially in Africa… It is for this reason that South Africa has set up a G20 Extraordinary Committee of Independent Experts on Global Wealth Inequality led by Professor Joseph Stiglitz, to table a report at the G20 Leaders’ Summit on the issue of inequality.”

Magwenya said there had been support for SA’s G20 priorities “by all those we have engaged with”.

“All the discussions around the G20 have been around ensuring alignment behind our chosen theme and areas of focus,” said Magwenya. 

“Engagements with heads of state cover much more broader themes than a single subject, notwithstanding the importance of the G20. There’s always reflection on bilateral relations and other areas of cooperation. So there are no meetings that have been set specifically on the G20 only,” he added.

Leaders’ Declaration

The G20 should result in something called a Leaders’ Declaration, which is the document that sets out how the needle on better global governance has been moved (or not) in the year that SA was in the G20 chair, Daily Maverick reported. If a declaration of consensus was not possible, then SA would issue a chairperson’s summary of the discussion.  

Mabhongo told Daily Maverick that SA’s G20 Leaders’ Declaration is “envisaged to be ambitious, bold and concise”. 

Read more: Recap — making sense of the G20 and B20 with SA at the helm

However, Sidiropoulos said that while SA would strive to get a declaration, that would mean there would be certain issues that it would have to compromise on — or there would need to be trade-offs.

“The question is: What are the trade-offs expected to be? Because you want a declaration, but you also don’t want a declaration that’s completely meaningless,” she said. 

According to Sidiropoulos, SA might be able to achieve a joint statement, but that “will obviously come at the so-called cost of a more ambitious declaration”. 

“There’s obviously certain verbal acrobatics that one can do… [But] I don’t think we’ll be in a position to tick all the boxes that we might’ve wanted to tick at the beginning of the year. So you have to sacrifice something if you believe the principle of consensus is important,” she said. DM