New brooms sweep clean:
Johannesburg Mayor Dada
Morero, under fire for his recent
spate of cleanup operations,
says such societal maladies
as the illegal connection of
electricity and encroachment pose
significant challenges in places
like Alexandra township, which
the City fathers are adamant they
will not allow. Photos: Supplied
Amid deteriorating infrastructure and mounting service delivery challenges, the City of Johannesburg is preparing to host the G20 Leader’s Summit on 22 to 23 November. For the first time, South Africa, the only African member state of the G20, will host the summit, where the world’s leading economies, plus the EU and AU, will convene to deliberate on pathways to global economic stability, growth, trade, investment and sustainable development. South Africa’s presidency has raised expectations that African priorities will be meaningfully reflected in the deliberations, emphasising the continent’s increasing relevance in shaping global agendas.
South Africa’s year-long presidency will conclude in November, following over a hundred working group discussions on a range of shared global economic and financial policies. The expectation is that the summit will produce a joint communiqué highlighting the consensus reached. However, whether those agreements are translated into meaningful outcomes once the formalities conclude often remains the real test.
This year’s Presidency has outlined a solid and forward-looking agenda anchored in four overarching priorities: harnessing critical minerals for inclusive growth and sustainable development, strengthening disaster resilience and response; mobilising finance for a Just Energy Transition (JET); and ensuring debt sustainability for low-income countries. Each focus area highlights how African challenges reflect the intersection between Africa’s developmental imperatives and the global system’s evolving demands.
This year’s agenda firmly underscores a heightened global focus on investment in critical minerals, reflecting their growing prominence in advancing global efforts to address shared challenges, particularly those related to clean energy transitions, economic growth, responsible consumption and sustainable development goals. Given that a considerable share of these natural resources is found in African countries, the continent is increasingly being looked at to drive global efforts to secure sustainable supply chains as economies transition to cleaner energy sources.
At the summit, South Africa will seek endorsement for its proposed G20 Critical Minerals Framework, which advances the growing recognition that minerals like cobalt, lithium, and rare earth elements are central to the global transition toward green energy. The framework champions inclusive development, ensuring resource-rich nations and communities benefit equitably from their mineral wealth.
According to the Institute for Security Studies Africa, South Africa’s presidency has been committed to developing a critical minerals framework aimed at empowering source countries to set up their own domestic value chains, like mineral processing industries. This would result in what President Cyril Ramaphosa described as an “additive rather than an extractive relationship” at January’s Davos World Economic Forum. In doing so, the framework’s objective aims to ensure shared value is derived from the countries where they are sourced.
Alongside the growing focus on critical minerals, however, are concerns about whether the framework will sufficiently address how such investments can equitably be distributed and governed, given the geopolitical and environmental stakes surrounding these resources. The realities of illegal mining, cross-border smuggling, community displacement, environmental crime and weak regulatory enforcement further erode potential gains and expose the underlying vulnerabilities facing Africa’s emerging bioeconomy.
Consequently, discussions on critical minerals at the G20 should prioritise strengthening institutional capacity and establishing transparent, accountable governance systems that ensure mineral resources are leveraged to foster long-term sustainability and inclusive economic growth. Without robust institutional governance frameworks, the growing emphasis on critical minerals risks reproducing historical patterns of extraction, advancing global sustainability agendas at the expense of African developmental and economic priorities.
Another key theme likely to emerge from the G20 discussions is the challenge of mitigating the disruptive impacts of climate change, ranging from disaster resilience to the JET. This will be important to monitor, particularly in assessing whether commitments move beyond purely economic imperatives toward the recognition that the adoption of future-proof policies that balance growth with sustainability is critical to global priorities.
Even though Africa contributes less than 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions, the continent is extremely vulnerable to the effects of climate change. The 2024 State of the Global Climate report by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) revealed that African countries, already vulnerable to climate variability, are experiencing some of the most severe impacts of global warming. From KwaZulu-Natal’s floods to the Horn of Africa’s droughts, the continent is living through the consequences of a crisis it did little to cause.
The G20’s Environment and Climate Sustainability Working Group has timeously prioritised land restoration, drought resilience, and adaptation on its agenda as extreme weather shocks intensify across the continent. Yet, the G20 must avoid only having a finance-heavy focus at the risk of undermining the opportunity to establish robust governance systems to facilitate its objectives. If it is to be successful it must acknowledge that infrastructure investment alone cannot build resilience if local and regional institutions lack capacity, accountability, or stable financing.
Disaster resilience should be read in that same way; the central questions must extend beyond asking not only who receives funding, but what that funding builds. It must go beyond emergency relief and engage in establishing robust and resilient systems; from urban planning and insurance to early-warning data and public education. In this way, resilience strategies must align economic planning with ecological realities, integrating local knowledge, adaptive designs, and transparent and accountable governance.
Instead, when sustainability is treated as a secondary consideration, disasters become inevitable and costly to recover from. When it is interwoven into governance structures and systems, they become resilient.
In addition, this G20 must take meaningful steps to address the challenges surrounding the JET. Ideally, G20 nations will not only reaffirm financial commitments to supporting green transitions in developing economies but also engage on the deeper governance questions that it has engendered. Nearly three years after the announcement of South Africa’s $8.5 billion JET partnership at COP26, implementation remains sluggish and politically complex, highlighting systemic barriers and structural obstacles that critically require the G20’s attention.
Recent studies on green finance in Africa reveal that insufficient institutional and policy frameworks, reliance on foreign investment, high perceived investment risk, underdeveloped green bond markets, a lack of low-carbon infrastructure, and a lack of effective public-private partnerships (PPPs) are some of the crucial obstacles hindering African countries from successfully raising capital for green finance investments.
Furthermore, a central challenge lies in the persistent misalignment between donor expectations and domestic realities. Transition funds, often structured as loans, risk intensifying debt vulnerabilities rather than alleviating them. Moreover, these transitions unfold within complex political economies where competing social and economic interests and institutional fragilities result in unpredictable outcomes.
The G20 offers a strategic opportunity to leverage and redesign transition finance so that it goes beyond decarbonisation imperatives to also enable equitable and sustainable development. Achieving this, however, requires a reorientation from climate finance as mere capital transfer toward establishing climate justice as a mechanism for capacity building and social empowerment.
It is increasingly clear that equitable transitions depend less on the scale of financial pledges than they do on integrity, participation, and political commitment. Such an approach must also prioritise governance reform, community empowerment, and alignment of environmental ambitions with developmental realities.
While the 2025 agenda does well to capture Africa’s most urgent priorities and reflects its growing relevance in shaping global trade and economic governance, ambition without credible governance risks becoming rhetoric.
Instead, advancing significant progress will depend on strengthening the institutions and accountability systems that bridge the goals of ecology, economy, and equity alongside smarter resource mobilisation, and governance mechanisms that link financing to real outcomes. Equitable benefit-sharing, capacity-building, and the mainstreaming of sustainability are further essential to make progress tangible and inclusive.
Ultimately, this year’s Summit will test whether the G20 can effectively integrate sustainability, governance, and growth in a way that delivers tangible outcomes, for both the continent and the broader international community, particularly at a time of evolving geopolitical and environmental challenges.