Africa’s G20 priorities have lost ground under the US presidency, with little pushback from the AU or other development-focused members.
Has the African Union (AU) taken up the continent’s baton from South Africa after United States (US) President Donald Trump evicted Pretoria from the G20 presidency? That left the AU, which only joined in 2023, as Africa’s only voice in the group. South Africa has been a member since the G20’s founding in 1999.
The US boycotted South Africa’s G20 presidency in 2025 for spurious reasons, then this year jettisoned almost all of Pretoria’s developmental, Africa-focused agenda, inherited largely from the previous presidencies of Indonesia, India and Brazil.
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South Africa had proposals to tackle inequality, increase financial inclusion, improve African countries’ access to capital, introduce a global minimum corporate tax rate, and address Africa’s unsustainable debt burden. Then Trump’s administration took over last December declaring that it would return the G20 to its core mission of driving economic growth and prosperity.
That pared-down agenda is starkly evident in the calendar. Last year, South Africa chaired about 130 official meetings, including 25 high-level ministerial ones, before the November leaders’ summit. The US programme comprises far fewer, with just four ministerial meetings culminating in the December leaders’ summit.
The AU appears to be trying to help fill the vacuum left by South Africa by coordinating its G20 role with Pretoria, which has much deeper G20 experience, says Paul-Simon Handy, Institute for Security Studies (ISS) Regional Director based in Addis Ababa. ‘South Africa has been … helping the AU to frame its contribution in the G20. AU [G20] meetings are organised with South Africa [which is] playing an important role.’
The AU also convened a strategic retreat in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, in April to align African positions within the US G20 and prepare a roadmap for the AU’s participation.
Burundian diplomat Willy Nyamitwe, the AU’s G20 sous-sherpa, told the meeting the success of the AU’s permanent membership in the G20 would be measured not by its mere presence but by its ‘tangible impact’ on Africa’s industrialisation, debt burdens and inclusive economic growth.
Equatorial Guinea’s Foreign Minister Simeón Oyono Esono Angüe said the US themes of growth and deregulation, trade, innovation and energy abundance ‘are of profound relevance to [Africa]. They intersect directly with Africa’s development aspirations, including industrialisation, infrastructure development, digital transformation and economic diversification.’
Yet the AU doesn’t seem to have published the envisaged roadmap or any other outcome document from the retreat.
ISS Senior Research Consultant Priyal Singh said the retreat showed that the AU had sought a more coordinated strategy for its G20 engagements. ‘This notably produced an engagement roadmap for the [continental] body. However, what has been missing is sustained public communication of those priorities, its negotiating objectives and its tangible gains.’
The G20 Chair’s Statement from this week’s G20 finance ministers and central bank governors meeting in Asheville, North Carolina, illustrated the contrast with South Africa’s presidency, and raised doubts about the AU’s impact.
South Africa’s finance priorities included debt sustainability, reducing the high cost of capital, particularly for African countries and mobilising finance for just transitions to renewable energy and greater climate resilience.
They also covered increased lending and wider Multilateral Development Banks reforms, more disaster relief financing, including climate change-caused disasters, a global minimum corporate tax and greater financial inclusion.
This week’s Asheville meeting focused instead on ‘private sector engagement, productivity growth, global imbalances, financial literacy, sovereign debt, digital assets, and financial sector issues.’
The only developmental item was a reaffirmed commitment to strengthen the implementation of the G20 Common Framework for restructuring unaffordable debt.
Even there, the emphasis fell on fair burden sharing among creditors, with China accused of not taking its fair share of haircuts in previous restructuring deals under the Common Framework.
Beijing seemed to get the hint – withholding its support from that paragraph of the outcome document. It did the same on three others, so the outcome document was a Chair’s Statement rather than a consensus communiqué.
China also objected to an agreement on eliminating global imbalances – that countries with excessive and persistent external surpluses should increase domestic consumption and reduce exports. This was clearly aimed at China’s over-production flooding international markets with cheap goods and de-industrialising much of the world.
China withheld its support from a paragraph expressing concerns about disruptions to energy trade, the blocking of the Strait of Hormuz and the need to resolve ongoing wars.
All other members, the AU included, agreed to the entire statement.
The AU had little reason to oppose improvements to the G20 Common Framework or to insist on fair treatment for all creditors. One can also imagine that the AU may well share the view that Chinese over-production is causing imbalances and distortions that hurt other countries.
But surely the AU shared China’s apparent indignation at the US’s evident hypocrisy complaining about energy trade disruptions caused by Strait of Hormuz blockages and the need to resolve ongoing wars? Given its own key role in causing the blockage by attacking Iran? Then again, no other G20 members except China objected to this statement.
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And would the AU have been happy with the statement welcoming the ‘successful streamlining’ of the G20 finance track’s agenda under the US presidency, and its focus on core economic and financial priorities? Wasn’t that another way of saying ‘we welcome the dumping of almost all of South Africa’s development finance agenda’?
Some G20 members, mainly Western, did complain privately that South Africa’s agenda was large and unwieldy. So, pruning it might not be altogether bad. It could even encourage new approaches to development funding, like increasing domestic resource mobilisation. Trump’s pruning, though, is surely excessive.
Perhaps the AU and other developmentally inclined members are doing by choice what South Africa had to do by force. That is, sit out the US presidency, and be ready to take up the fight again next year under the United Kingdom. The risk is that a year of silence becomes the baseline for what Africa can expect from the G20.
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Peter Fabricius, Consultant, ISS Pretoria
