Multilateralism lives. South Africa’s G20 presidency proved it.

When the world’s most powerful governments flew into Johannesburg for the G20 Leaders’ Summit on 22-23 November 2025, they did more than attend another elite meeting: they made a collective, if imperfect, wager on multilateralism. Against a backdrop of tariffs, boycotts and sharp unilateralism from one of the group’s most powerful members, leaders nonetheless agreed a joint declaration that foregrounded climate action, debt relief, development and a renewed commitment to rules-based cooperation. For a country that assumed the G20 presidency on 1 December 2024 and led under the banner ‘Solidarity, Equality and Sustainability,’ hosting the first G20 summit on African soil was always going to be a political tightrope. South Africa walked it – bruised, pragmatic and unexpectedly influential. 

The Johannesburg summit was short, symbolically enormous and strategically precise. South Africa’s presidency reframed the G20 agenda around four linked priorities – debt sustainability for low-income countries, disaster resilience, financing a just energy transition, and leveraging critical minerals for inclusive industrialisation – and used the year to build technical papers, task forces and policy proposals that put Africa’s development challenges on centre stage. The payoff was a leaders’ declaration that, while not revolutionary, marked a substantive pivot: it pledged action on debt transparency, stronger climate-finance coordination, and more attention to inequality and industrialisation for developing countries. That declaration did not happen in a vacuum; it was the product of a year of engagement across the Finance and Sherpa tracks and the work of an Africa Expert Panel and an independent committee on inequality chaired by Joseph Stiglitz. Those strands helped transform what might have been an abstract set of talking points into a set of deliverables that matter to African policy-makers and investors. 

Multilateralism, with or without Trump 

If Johannesburg’s chief political feat was this: showing that multilateralism is still a mechanism for problem-solving even when one major player signals its disaffection. The Trump administration’s posture – transactional, inward-facing and at times openly hostile to the G20’s broadened remit – risked hollowing out the summit. That did not happen. European partners turned up in force. Emerging economies and African leaders took the podium and, crucially, backed a text that placed development and fairness at its core. Finland’s President, Alexander Stubb, voiced what many delegates were thinking when he warned of a shift in the global balance of power toward the east and the south and argued that multilateralism – with its rules, norms and institutions – remains the best bulwark against transactional multipolarity. His point was blunt: cooperation, not competition, offers manageable pathways through crises that no single country can resolve alone. That argument landed in Johannesburg where the proof of the pudding was not rhetorical but practical: agreement on concrete language about debt, climate finance and critical minerals that most leaders could live with. 

South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa put the thesis plainly in his remarks:

Today, we have adopted the Leaders’ Declaration of the G20 South Africa Summit, in which we outline the far-reaching actions on which we have agreed to build a better, more equal and sustainable world.

The line matters because it signals intent – not just aspiration – and because it came after weeks of hard bargaining that produced a document recognisably shaped by South Africa’s priorities. That the United States registered its disquiet, and that a handful of leaders withheld endorsement on narrow grounds, did not prevent the G20 from producing a consensus text. The outcome demonstrates that a committed, well-resourced presidency can leverage diplomatic capital to preserve the multilateral space even amid geopolitical headwinds. 

What did Johannesburg actually secure? 

First, an explicit political commitment to treat debt sustainability as a central economic-security issue, not a peripheral charity case. The language endorsed strengthening the Common Framework, improving debt transparency, and exploring voluntary mechanisms such as debt-for-climate and debt-for-nature swaps. Second, the summit pushed climate finance toward operational solutions: more deliberate coordination among development banks, pilots for carbon market integrity and blended finance instruments that can de-risk private investment in African renewables and resilience. Third, critical minerals – long treated as a raw-export line item – were reframed as levers for local value-addition, supply-chain resilience and industrial policy. Together, these moves represent tangible wins for the Global South agenda South Africa promoted. They are not panaceas, but they are policy steps beyond rhetoric – the difference between speeches and the scaffolding needed to finance projects and sustain jobs. 

None of this erases the limits. Civil society and debt-justice networks rightly point out that frameworks without enforceable timelines or binding commitments risk becoming paperwork rather than relief. The Common Framework still struggles to coax private creditors into equitable restructuring, and the cost of capital for many African borrowers remains punitive. Yet the summit advanced technical architecture – an Africa Engagement Framework, expert panels, and a bellwether focus on inequality – that keeps the policy conversation alive and gives practitioners tools to press for follow-through. In short: Johannesburg delivered architecture; the hard work to operationalise it begins now. 

Acid test ahead 

The next G20 presidency will be the acid test. A future US administration may seek to streamline the G20, narrow its remit and prioritise the financial track. There are rumours and indications that the incoming leadership might hollow out working groups or resist commitments on climate and inequality. That prospect ought to trouble emerging markets and middle powers. But hollowing out is a blunt instrument and, even if attempted, it will not erase the networks, data, and institutional linkages that were strengthened in 2025. The G20’s value lies as much in the connective tissue – the relationships between finance ministers, central bankers, development banks and engagement groups – as it does in any single summit communiqué. Those relationships do not evaporate because one administration prefers different emphases. 

Moreover, South Africa’s presidency has helped diversify the constituencies that believe the G20 is worth defending. Europe’s visible engagement in Johannesburg – including a significant investment pledge to support South Africa’s green transition – underscored that the bloc sees strategic interest in preserving the G20’s developmental functions. For Africa, and in agreement with the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership’s Professor Richard Calland, the summit offered a clear demonstration that the continent can set agendas rather than merely react to external policy cycles. That accrues diplomatic credibility to Pretoria and strengthens coalitions that will press future presidencies to honour the tools and commitments now on the table. In short: even if the G20’s form is contested in 2026, its functional relevance is likely to endure. 

Optimism is not naïveté 

The Johannesburg summit was never going to cure every structural injustice in global finance. It did something more useful: it reaffirmed that multilateral cooperation remains the most effective technology we currently have to manage systemic risks – climate collapse, migration pressures, pandemic threats and rapid technological change. South Africa’s stewardship, for all its imperfections, offered a template for how middle powers can use convening authority to stitch together coalitions that protect the interests of the many, not the few. 

As the South African Institute of International Affairs’ Elizabeth Sidiropoulos reminds us, the end of a presidency is not the end of influence. The work that began in Johannesburg will be carried forward through regional groupings, through BRICS and SADC, and through partnerships with European and multilateral institutions. If 2025 taught us anything, it is that multilateralism is resilient because it is useful – and because a plurality of actors now understand that unilateral retreat is a strategic self-harm. 

Optimism is not naïveté. It is a judgement: the international system is frayed, but it is fixable. Johannesburg did not create a utopia; it produced an agenda and forged new allies who can move those items from paper to practice. That is not small. In a time when the temptation to turn inward is strong, the leaders who chose to gather in South Africa chose cooperation over cession. They did so for reasons of principle and prudence. That choice – repeated in future fora, defended in capitals, and translated into projects that change lives – will determine whether multilateralism survives as a mechanism for global problem-solving. In Johannesburg, it earned another reprieve.