When South Africa hosted the first G20 summit on African soil in November 2025, its ambition was unmistakable.
For decades, the world’s most powerful economies had debated climate finance, development and energy transitions largely without the continent that will experience many of the consequences most acutely. The Johannesburg summit was meant to change that.
South Africa had made its priorities clear at the start of its presidency: strengthening disaster resilience, debt reform, securing finance for a just energy transition, and harnessing critical minerals.
Samantha Graham-Maré, South Africa’s deputy minister of electricity and energy, told Dialogue Earth: “Those issues were chosen because of the need to focus on an African agenda.”
The country’s ambitions stretched beyond setting the tone for a single summit year. Pretoria hoped they would reorient the G20’s long-term agenda around questions of development, energy access and industrial policy which have long dominated African economic debates.
That work unfolded across the architecture of G20 diplomacy: 22 working groups and 13 engagement groups that spent months negotiating policy proposals before leaders gathered in Johannesburg.
Graham-Maré was a member of the Energy Transition Working Group, where South Africa attempted to push the conversation past headline promises and toward tangible goals, such as supporting universal access to clean cooking solutions.
“The summit goals really looked at a shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy,” said Phindile Cebekhulu-Msomi, CEO of Hazile Group, a South African clean energy and agriculture company.
She participated in the sustainable food systems task force of the Business 20, a private-sector group that fed recommendations into the G20 process.
The four presidential priorities and the Africa agenda were “really successful” and “met expectations”, said Narnia Bohler-Muller, an executive at South Africa’s Human Sciences Research Council, and co-chair of the Women’s 20, another group that submitted policy recommendations.
But even as South Africa secured a G20 leaders’ declaration which referenced those priorities, the political drama surrounding the summit threatened to eclipse them. The United States boycotted the gathering, a rupture that continues to shape the G20’s trajectory.
South Africa has since temporarily withdrawn from the G20 after the US blocked it from attending the first preparatory meeting under Washington’s presidency. Pretoria was also absent from the US critical minerals summit held in Washington in February.
Europe steps into the gap
If Washington’s stance threatened to isolate Pretoria, it instead seems to have reshuffled G20 alliances.
Danny Sriskandarajah, chief executive of New Economics Foundation, a UK-based think-tank, believes the tactful way South Africa has handled the “Trump bullying” has gained it respect from other countries.
Europe, locked in its own disputes with the US, has been especially quick to move.
“Our relationship with Europe has, if anything, strengthened as a result of America’s withdrawal from these conversations,” said Graham-Maré.
“Where America has pulled out of our just energy conversation, Europe has stepped into the breach and has said that they will obviously fulfil some of the requirements that America was required to fulfil,” she added.
That shift is already visible in the flow of finance and technical assistance. In the immediate aftermath of the G20 summit, France’s development agency, AFD, provided a EUR 300 million (USD 350 million) loan to support the modernisation and decarbonisation of South Africa’s rail and port infrastructure.
The European Commission, meanwhile, has announced it will spend close to EUR 3 billion in 2026 to strengthen the EU’s access to critical minerals and reduce its dependence on China. That logic puts Europe first, not Africa, but it still overlaps with a central plank of South Africa’s G20 agenda: the push to add value before export including the build-out of local processing infrastructure.
That said, Europe’s commitment to supporting South Africa’s G20 agenda in spite of the US is limited. As evidenced by France’s recent decision to disinvite the country from June’s G7 summit in eastern France. South Africa has been a regular guest at previous G7 summits. The French side denies the invite was withdrawn due to US pressure but rather in order “to hold a more streamlined G7”.
China, too, has moved in ways that South African officials believe reinforces their agenda. A framework agreement has already been reached to allow duty-free access for South African goods into the Chinese market. Starting on 1 May 2026, China will implement zero-tariff treatment on 100% of tariff lines for the 53 African nations it has diplomatic ties with.
All of which lends force to Cebekhulu-Msomi’s argument that bringing the world to South Africa, even without the United States, and securing a declaration was a move towards the rest of the world saying “we are ready, we want to work with Africa.”
The UK has also announced new initiatives, including more than ZAR 100 million (USD 6 million) in funding for South African start-ups, as well as support for rail reform. With Washington now cast as the chief antagonist of the multilateral order South Africa tried to defend, the UK has reason to occupy the space in between. This is especially so given the UK is next in line for the presidency after the US. The troika, made up of the previous, current and next presidencies, is supposed to provide continuity across three years and allow unfinished business to travel forward.
In Sriskandarajah’s reading, “the UK government does believe in these sorts of institutions,” far more than the current US administration. And “Keir Starmer is keen to be a global statesman” especially by holding the G7 on UK soil in 2027.
“The UK will want to position itself as resuming normal service [after the US],” says Sriskandarajah.
That matters because the troika is one of the few mechanisms through which a presidency can try to preserve its agenda. During South Africa’s presidency, Graham-Maré said she had watched Brazil use every troika opportunity “to continue to drive their own narrative, their own agenda” and South Africa intended to do the same regardless of Washington’s current posture.
That ambition has run into the obvious problem: Pretoria cannot use the troika fully if it is not in the room. Despite London’s apparent desire to play intermediary, little has yet been offered to guarantee South Africa’s attendance and participation during the US year. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is the only G20 leader to publicly state that he would urge Trump to invite South Africa to the US summit. The heads of state of China, Russia and the US were not present at the Johannesburg G20 summit (Image: Michael Kappeler / dpa / Alamy) Although Pretoria initially hoped to defuse the situation over the coming year, Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana has since conceded “South Africa is on leave in 2026” from the G20. He is confident though that it is only a temporary setback until the UK presidency next year.
Still, the fact that South Africa secured a leaders’ declaration at all remains central to how its supporters tell the story of Johannesburg.
“They [the US] really did try to bully us throughout the year, on a number of levels and we held firm and stuck to our guns,” said Graham-Maré.
She described a pattern of obstruction that grew more overt across the year. There was an attempt by the US to attend online an in-person Energy Transition Working Group meeting, which South Africa rejected on principle and which resulted in no US attendance. Then there was the dispatch of a very junior representative to the ministerial-level meeting.
Will the commitments hold?
But rather than side with the US, other countries closed ranks around a leaders’ declaration. By the time Argentina took on an obstructive role for the Americans that position was viewed as in bad faith. Both Graham-Maré and Bohler-Muller confirmed Argentina had became more vocally critical as the year progressed and the Americans stepped back.
But although the presidency succeeded in putting African priorities at the centre of the conversation, it is much less clear that it extracted measurable commitments equal to the rhetoric.
“This working by consensus doesn’t look like it’s going to yield a lot of progress in the foreseeable future… I suspect [2026’s] going to be far worse,” lamented Sriskandarajah.
“A few warm words and a couple of voluntary initiatives or principles just isn’t going to cut it,” for the G20 to achieve those priorities.
Bohler-Muller reached a similarly sober conclusion. “I think the declaration was very much a compromised document. The wording was relatively weak and words really matter,” she said.
That may be the lasting verdict on Johannesburg. The next two presidencies will decide whether South Africa’s year marked a durable shift.
If the troika works as intended, Pretoria may yet preserve parts of its agenda long enough for the UK’s 2027 summit to pick them back up. If it does not, Africa’s first G20 will stand as a revealing achievement: a year in which the continent’s priorities were finally heard at full volume, but not yet secured against the whims of raw power.
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