G20 summit in South Africa overshadowed by absences of Trump and Milei

South Africa will host the G20 summit this weekend, where it will seek commitments to ease the debt of developing countries and to fight inequalities, with the notable absence of US President Donald Trump and President Javier Milei.

Trump’s return to the White House dealt a heavy blow to the first African presidency of the G20. The group’s 19 countries, together with the European Union and the African Union, represent 85 percent of global GDP and roughly two-thirds of the world’s population.

Since his return to power, the US president has expressed his distrust of multilateralism – of which the G20 is one of the instruments – through measures such as the imposition of tariffs.

His questioning of the global order is compounded by fierce attacks against the government of South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, accused of inaction in the face of the alleged persecution of the country’s Afrikaner minority, descended from European settlers.

South Africa, affected by the highest tariffs in sub-Saharan Africa (30 percent), attempted to restore relations with Washington.

But its president, Cyril Ramaphosa, ultimately resigned himself to moving forward with the agenda, with or without the world’s leading economic power.

The South African presidency, whose theme is “Solidarity, equality, sustainability”, will focus mainly on easing the debt of developing countries, financing adaptation to climate change and combating economic inequalities.

Between 2021 and 2023, the African continent spent 70 dollars per person to pay interest on its debt, more than the money invested in education or health – 63 and 44 dollars per person respectively – according to the UN.

South Africa will seek to push the creation of an international panel on inequalities, similar to the IPCC (the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), the main recommendation of a report led by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz.

“If approved, it will be a real success not only for Pretoria, but also for the millions of people in the Global South whose voices are often not taken into account in these elitist economic forums,” says Tendai Mbanje, a researcher at the Centre for Human Rights at the University of Pretoria.

– China present –
It remains to be seen whether the South African presidency will manage to obtain the necessary consensus for a joint final declaration. According to several sources who took part in the preparatory work, the Argentine representatives stood out for their obstructive stance.

Milei, who has repeatedly expressed his diplomatic alignment with Trump, will not attend the summit but will instead send his foreign minister, Pablo Quirno.

In the absence of the United States, China – whose prime minister Li Qiang will travel to Johannesburg – is expected to once again advocate for multilateralism.

“Economic globalisation and the emergence of a multipolar world are irreversible,” Li Qiang declared at the end of October during a regional summit in Asia, where he called for avoiding a return to the commercial “law of the jungle”.

On the Russian side, Vladimir Putin’s economic adviser, Maxim Oreshkin, will represent Moscow at the summit in the absence of Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

The meeting will be held on Saturday and Sunday in a conference centre located in the heart of South Africa’s economic capital.

The summit will mark the end of a cycle of G20 presidencies by countries of the so-called Global South, following Indonesia (2022), India (2023) and Brazil (2024).

After the summit, South Africa will hand over the rotating presidency to the United States.

The Trump administration announced its intention to focus the G20 on issues of economic cooperation.

The next summit will be held in December 2026 in Miami, on a golf course owned by the Trump family.

–AFP