Speaking in tongues: While Washington sought to scupper the success of the G20 Leaders’ Summit hosted by
South Africa and actually boycotted the event, American business was in the plenary halls and vocal at the
B20.
As the B20 Summit concluded in Johannesburg on November 18-20, 2025, South Africa’s historic G20 Presidency being the first ever hosted on African soil, left a lasting imprint on the global stage.
The Summit moved beyond rhetoric, delivering concrete, actionable recommendations from business leaders to G20 governments. These key outcomes signal a stronger and more inclusive multilateral future, and from an Africa luxury perspective, there were impressive key takeaways:
Despite geopolitical tensions between South Africa and the United States, which is the next G20 host, the summit defied its host’s presidency banner of “Solidarity, Equality, and Sustainability” at first glance. However, the US government may have boycotted the official G20 proceedings, but American businesses graced the B20 convention, while close US allies such as France and the United Kingdom participated actively in the G20 itself.
This demonstrated that the Global South’s potential to shape a more collaborative, inclusive and profitable future cannot be underestimated. Even amid rising political divides, there remains both space and urgency for honest dialogue. The gathering ultimately reinforced the G20 theme of “Solidarity, Equality, and Sustainability,” creating tangible opportunities for Global North–South partnerships as well as deeper South–South collaboration.
From a luxury perspective, it goes without saying that Africa shouldn’t only supply raw materials; it should shape finished luxury goods and contribute towards inclusive policy, that would avoid fragmentation, to support innovation. This gives opportunities to structures such as the African Luxury Council to safeguard and support luxury diplomacy.
Risks, limits, and new industrial policies are reshaping trade – businesses that stay adaptable and engaged will lead the way.
African luxury will only scale if Africa’s talent is skilled, mobile, digitally connected, fairly financed, and supported by predictable policy. The world is moving from borrowing African aesthetics to embracing African authority. Co-creation puts African creators at the centre of their own stories and understanding North-South and West-East dynamics is key for African luxury brands seeking international partnerships and market expansion. Africa’s cultural and creative capital is becoming a real economic power, and the current global shifts have created perfect conditions for African luxury to rise, scale and lead.
With Africa hosting the summit, the focus echoed the continent’s business, social and future opportunities and imperatives frequently. It touched on points around making logistics serve the continent better, and mitigating connectivity challenges within the continent that make, for example, inter-country travel better to “boost tourism”.
The rest of the world would benefit immensely from improvements in logistics, including investments into the rail infrastructure, because they would stimulate efficiency when trading with Africa, from material sourcing to retail and to luxury experiences, like travel.
This year the B20 Summit was expected to reposition Africa as a central architect of global cooperation, signalling a shift where the Global South’s priorities finally help shape the solutions to shared economic challenges – which was a direction supported at the global think-tank gatherings.
Greater balance in Global South–North decision-making is important for Africa to be empowered to its fullest potential. This means Africa should be leading conversations and not just participating, and more visibility for African-led economic strategies.
Strategic actions towards this objective include mapping regional luxury corridors, incorporating luxury tourism into the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), a trade instrument officially launched on 1 January 2021, with a focus to create a single continental market for goods and services across 54 of the 55 African Union (AU) member states.
Ralph Mupita, Group President and CEO of MTN, highlighted the fact that Africa is open for business: “80% of MTN’s earnings come from outside South Africa, highlighting the company’s pan-African growth story.”
Africa’s greatest challenges are also its greatest opportunities. What we often perceive as difficulties, particularly our infrastructure deficits, especially in the digital space, are in fact open doors for capital deployment and rapid economic advancement.
As technology plays an increasingly central role, the digital economy is emerging as Africa’s most powerful accelerator of productivity and growth over the next 30 years. This presents an extraordinary opportunity, especially given Africa’s young, tech-savvy population, the continent’s most prized asset and a major growth engine for decades to come.
When these challenges are properly addressed, their solutions can fuel transformative growth across sectors, from technology-powered agriculture and manufacturing to the rise of African luxury and creative industries.
AI can scale Africa craft without eroding heritage. However, there must be a clear-cut plan towards this goal. Strategic actions that can support this include, launching a Digital Atelier Accelerator programme, developing ethical AI guidelines for luxury businesses in different economic sectors and partnering with tech firms for metaverse retail to overcome the infrastructural barriers cited for limiting luxury growth on the continent.
Cross collaboration between relevant economic sectors around tech is a big asset for the continent, and for multilateral global business partnerships. For example, if we simplify how an SME can transact, procure and sell, it’ll have more capacity to improve efficiency.
Senior Vice President Government Affairs & Policy at Mastercard, Ravi Aurora, told the B20 Summit: “Since 2018, we’ve invested $10 billion into safety-security and cybersecurity to ensure that the ecosystem can be trusted and is secure. Over 125 billion transactions go through our system per year, and it’s leveraging Artificial Intelligence, and a lot of tools to minimise and detect fraud. That’s the way we save billions of dollars and safeguard the interests of the customer. AI is a big enabler, and tech can leave people behind, and you don’t want to risk that.”
Political stability is essential for nurturing sensitive sectors like African luxury, which depend on consistent policy and advocacy to ensure sustainability and the protection of intellectual property rooted in the continent’s rich cultural capital, drawn from diverse regional, national, and tribal experiences that transform cultural heritage into economic value.
As the future is reimagined with the global South rising to lead industries, empowered through financial inclusion, new market access, strategic support, green energy, and sustainability, strong, forward-thinking policies are critical to turning this vision into reality, positioning cultural capital as a powerful driver of economic capital.
African luxury must be positioned as a co-author of global narratives. In wrapping up last week, the G20/B20 in South Africa doesn’t just convene elites; it commissions Africa’s luxury vanguard from small business to policy makers. By embedding ownership, equity, trade, and sustainability into policy, we’ve charted a course where African ingenuity redefines opulence.
One of the key learnings was that we mobilise and grow investment in Africa through innovative finance. Creating systems to strengthen and grow the luxe sector, includes
considerations like the intentional effort to harmonise bilateral and multilateral investment treaties on the continent through AfCFTA Protocol on investment and address regulatory roadblocks to investing in Africa. Also, strengthening G20 ties with the AfCFTA, “by
encouraging G20 members to send trade diplomats to the AfCFTA secretariat with observer status will increase entrenchment and collaboration”, according to the business forum.
Africa on Luxury, as an education platform in the luxury space that is principled on drawing context, there are things that we were hoping for in-depth discussions on.
Luxury strengthens cultural diplomacy, and this is a huge implication when connecting the North with the South. Shared experiences strengthen bonds.
From a business perspective, AfCFTA is a vital instrument towards booming and sustaining the luxury sector. It is poised to unlock explosive growth for Africa’s
luxury industry by creating a unified $3.6 trillion market where African-born high-end brands in fashion, jewellery, watches, leather goods, and spirits can scale continent-wide with zero tariffs and a rising class of affluent African consumers eager to embrace “Made in Africa” luxury.