by LUKE ZUNGA
JOHANNESBURG, (CAJ News) – THE G20 is a group of developed and developing countries.
The members of the G20 are Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Republic of Korea, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey, United Kingdom (UK) and the United States, (US), and two groupings – the European Union (EU) and African Union(AU).
Africa was represented by Angolan President, João Lourenço, who is also the chair of African Union (AU). South Africa is the only G20 member country in Africa. The chairmanship of the G20 rotates every year among members.
This year 2025, South Africa is the chair and therefore the summit of members is held in South Africa, Johannesburg.
South Africa succeeded Brazil which was chair in 2024. The next chair country is the United States of America. Unfortunately the US is not participating at the G20 summit in South Africa.
The chair country is supposed to bring issues which need discussion and agreement on. These discussions take place throughout the year, involving business (B20), civil society and all stakeholders to formulate the agenda to be agreed by consensus at the summit. The agenda is therefore world pressing issues.
The 2025 summit revolves around 3 headings – solidarity, equality and sustainability and in 4 critical areas which the G20 leaders will seek to agree on.
- Harnessing critical minerals for inclusive growth and sustainable development
This issue is that critical minerals are used by the world for development but the countries producing the minerals often are not benefiting much out of their minerals.
The areas where the minerals come from remain poor and underdeveloped. The thrust of the debate is how to balance the extraction of the minerals and how to ensure the benefits are also localized in the areas and countries such minerals come from. Critical minerals include gold, bauxite, manganese, chromium, tin, cobalt, lithium, germanium, gallium, indium, niobium, beryllium, tantalum, tungsten, bismuth, selenium etc.
These critical minerals are used for digital technology developments such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), robots, software developments, energy production, communications and transport such as electric motor vehicles, etc.
The continent of Africa has the highest total reserves of critical minerals, holding about 30%. Africa’s mineral wealth includes a majority of the world’s cobalt (around 47%), chromium (80%), and platinum group metals (80%), along with 85% of manganese reserves.
The DRC has about 70% of the world’s lithium, and Guinea has largest bauxite reserves. South Africa has manganese and platinum group metal and gold. Platinum is an effective catalyst for fuel cell energy fusion. Africa is currently the main supplier of critical minerals to the world.
Africa stands to benefit if the proposals put forward by South Africa’s chairmanship are adopted and rationalized. For the DRC there are proposals how it may utilize its minerals more effectively on www.organizecapitals.com but the citizens of the DRC seem not to be reading the proposals, maybe because they are in English and they speak French.
- Strengthening disaster resilience and response.
Disaster resilience and response is linked to major disasters such as floods, cyclones, earthquakes, draughts and rising sea levels, disease outbreaks etc. Global warming has brought frequent and deadly floods, mudslides, storms, cyclones which affect many people.
The proposal seeks to rationalize the way the world responds to disasters. War is also a disaster. How does the world respond to wars such as Russia-Ukraine war, Sudan civil war Israeli-Hamas war where people are massacred.
Africa would benefit if there is a mechanism to prevent, detect the onset of disasters and quick response to destruction of infrastructures, the dead and injured people in the disaster areas.
Hunger is a disaster which Ethiopia, Sudan and Gaza are gripped with. There are other disasters you can think of.
- Mobilising finance for a Just Energy Transition (JET)
Mobilising finance for a Just Energy Transition (JET is a call to ensure there is finance to assist those countries which are poor to engage the elevated measures for climate change. Usually, poor countries are caught up in the strange world of limiting climate impact while trying to increase productivity to grow their economies. When increasing productivity energy is consumed by industries and households increasing the carbon footprint. Sources of energy are drifting towards ‘clean energy’ which include solar, hydro, nuclear and other climate friendly sources.
The issue is that developed countries were responsible for large scale carbon emissions which damaged the atmosphere. Africa and other poor countries expect some compensation for this climate damage which caused damage to the ozone layer resulting in droughts, cyclones and changes of seasons.
The ozone layer is the blanket of carbon dioxide above the atmosphere enveloping the globe to protect the earth from sun radiation waves.
Damaging the ozone layer allows more radiation from the sun to penetrate and hit the earth causing temperatures to rise.
At the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP21!) in Paris in December 2015, the experts agreed that a rise of 1.5 degrees in average world temperatures would cause floods and cyclones in some parts of the globe and drought and water shortages in others, as well as rising oceans which will swallow some islands and towns along the shoreline.
Funding must be contributed to moderate and control energy production to control these risks.
4 Ensuring debt sustainability for low-income countries.
Ensuring debt sustainability for low-income countries is about efforts to ease the cost of debt and the debt burden for poor countries. African countries increased debt 3-fold in the last 15 years to over $700 billion, that debt consumes much of the taxes the government collects, called ‘fiscal squeeze’.
As the currencies depreciate the amount paid for debt increases considerably and debt payments consume a large portion of government revenue, stifling service deliveries and infrastructure development.
However, the debt burden in African and poor Global South countries is caused by slow growth. It can be solved by increasing the pace of industrial output.
It is tricky because many African countries think they have no capital and skills to grow their economies. Actually, they do not realize they have to organize the capital.
That is why a website www.organizecapitals.com was set, to urge Global South countries to find capital solutions within their countries. As the economies grow, the tax base increases, the volume of government revenue increases as well as strengthening the exchange value of their currencies to cope with and bring down debt levels.
The G20 countries will put these challenges to the summit and how countries intercede with these issues to support the common goals.
The United States did not attend the G20 summit in South Africa. There are two reasons. One is that these topics are not of interest to the United States. The US wants a dominant position, while these topics are urging a fairer position of equality.
The US forced Ukraine to cede rights to critical minerals in exchange for the costs of war with Russia. China secured a large portion of African rare minerals.
The US is competing for the same. The Trump administration has not been interested in climate change, and realizes that it will cost the US more, as the world’s biggest economy, to finance the contributions of energy transition. The US controls the World Bank, IMF and IDA.
The topics of loans devalue its dominance in lending. Therefore, the G20 will not improve US interests. The second reason is that South Africa reported Israel to the International Court of Justice. The US is on the side of Israel and wants nothing to do with South Africa.
At the end of the day the participation of the USA was central to the handover. That the US did not attend attests to tilting the ballast of power. The US lost control of world events to end up in these finicky situations.
The contrast is that most of the world’s influential leaders from Europe, Asia and Americas attended.
For Africa these discussions do not bring immediate solutions, such as jobs and service delivery, but will guide the future, for results say ten years later.
– CAJ News