Africa’s first G20 summit opens with ambitious agenda, US boycott

The first Group of 20 summit to be held in Africa opened on Saturday with an ambitious agenda to make progress on solving some of the long-standing problems that have afflicted the world’s poorest nations.

Leaders and top government officials from the richest and leading emerging economies came together at an exhibition centre near the famous Soweto township in South Africa, once home to Nelson Mandela, to try and find some consensus on the priorities set out by the host country.

Many of South Africa’s priorities for the group, especially a focus on climate change and its impact on developing countries, have met resistance from the United States, which is boycotting the talks.

South Africa’s agenda

South Africa, which gets to set the agenda as the country holding the rotating presidency, wants leaders to agree to more help for poor countries to recover from climate-related disasters, reduce their foreign debt burdens, transition to green energy sources and harness their own critical mineral wealth – all in an attempt to counter widening global inequality.

“We’ll see,” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on whether the G20 could prioritise developing world countries and make meaningful reforms. “But I think South Africa has done its part in putting those things clearly on the table.”

The two-day summit will take place without the world’s biggest economy after US President Donald Trump ordered a US boycott of the summit over his claims that South Africa is pursuing racist anti-white policies and persecuting its Afrikaner white minority.The Trump administration has also made clear its opposition to South Africa’s G20 agenda from the start of the year, when South Africa began hosting G20 meetings. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio skipped a G20 foreign ministers meeting in February, calling the agenda all about diversity, equity and inclusion and climate changeRubio said he would not waste American taxpayers’ money on that.

Diplomatic rift

The monthslong diplomatic rift between the US and South Africa deepened in the buildup to the main summit this weekend, but while Trump’s boycott dominated the pre-talks discussions in Johannesburg and threatened to undercut the agenda, some of the leaders were eager to move on.

“I do regret it,” French President Emmanuel Macron said of Trump’s absence, “but it should not block us. Our duty is to be present, engage and work all together because we have so many challenges.”

The G20 is actually a group of 21 members that includes 19 nations, the European Union and the African Union.

The bloc was formed in 1999 as a bridge between rich and poor nations to confront global financial crises. While it often operates in the shadow of the Group of Seven richest democracies, G20 members together represent around 85 per cent of the world’s economy, 75 per cent of international trade and more than half the global population.

But it works on consensus rather than any binding resolutions, and that is often hard to come by with the different interests of members like the US, Russia, China, India, Japan, the Western European nations France, Germany and the UK, and others like Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and South Africa.

Guterres cautioned that rich nations have often failed to make the concessions required to strike effective climate or global financial reform agreements.

Doubts over a declaration

G20 summits traditionally end with a leaders’ declaration, which details any broad agreement reached by the members, but even that was proving hard to come by in Johannesburg.

South Africa said the US was exerting pressure on it not to issue any leaders’ declaration in the absence of the US and instead tone down the final document to a unilateral statement from the host country.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa responded to that by saying “we will not be bullied” and has promised a declaration from all members present at the close of the summit on Sunday, with or without US input.

Even so, the direction of the G20 bloc is likely to change sharply given that the US takes over the rotating presidency from South Africa at the end of this summit, as the Trump administration has derided the focus on climate change and inequality. Trump has said the US will stage next year’s summit at his golf club in Doral, Florida.

The only role the US will play at this summit, the White House said, will be when a representative from the United States Embassy in South Africa attends the formal handover ceremony at the end to accept the G20 presidency.

South Africa said it’s an insult for Ramaphosa to hand over to what it considers to be a junior diplomatic official.

“We have communicated to the American government that the president will not be handing over to a junior official of the embassy,” South African Foreign Ministry spokesperson Chrispin Phiri told The Associated Press. “And so, as a result, we don’t anticipate that there’ll be any form of handover here (at the summit).”