South Africa Becomes the First African Nation to Host the G20

South Africa becomes the first African nation to host the G20 Conference in November of 2025.

On November 22-23 of 2025, South Africa will become the first African country to host the G20. The theme of this year’s conference will be "Solidarity, Equality, Sustainability”. Leaders from around the world will go to Johannesburg to attend the conference. However, no representative from the U.S. will be present, and a Chinese Premier will attend in the place of Xi Jing Ping.

African leaders have accused the West and other wealthy nations of seeking to sabotage consensus on key issues to be discussed by not attending the conference or not taking it seriously. The New York Times reports that the U.S.’s pullback from multilateralism is impacting the overall goals of the conference. 

The G20, or Group of 20, is a gathering of the 19 largest economies in the world for discussion on shared goals of economic development, stability, and sustainability. The countries and parties invited to the G20 are Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Republic of Korea, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Türkiye, the United Kingdom, and the United States, the European Union, and since 2023, the African Union.

Preparation for this year’s summit has been ongoing for many months, engaging leading thinkers and policymakers in such arenas as climate change, clean energy, health, and education. 

South Africa, first African host of the G20, is a member of the BRICS alliance with Brazil, Russia, India, and China. In the absence of the U.S., these countries are strengthening their own bilateral ties. During the summit, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India plan to meet bilaterally to strengthen their security cooperation. There has been discussion among BRICS members, and particularly Russia, for adding a permanent seat to the G20 for the BRICS alliance itself. 

For South Africa’s part, they have focused G20 taskforces on addressing global inequalities and working toward other goals relevant to South African international goals. Among the presentations expected at the G20 next week is one by Nobel Economics Prize laureate Joseph Stiglitz on global wealth inequality and its impacts on growth, poverty, and multilateralism. This taskforce was convened by President Ramaphosa in August, and is the first such taskforce in the G20.

Despite the absence of the U.S. at the upcoming meetings, South Africa has reaffirmed the importance of the G20. The South African envoy to India said that even without the U.S. present, the G20 is “too big to fail.” With the important questions and challenges South Africa seeks to discuss at the upcoming meetings, this statement will be put to the test.