President of South Africa praises Brasil's legacy and outlines priorities for the G20 in 2025

After a Summit in Brasil marked by historic advances, South Africa will assume the presidency of the G20 in 2025 under the leadership of Cyril Ramaphosa, continuing the leading role of the Global South in the forum's discussions. The next term begins on December 1st and will focus on the fight against hunger, climate change, and digital inclusion, emphasizing international solidarity and the legacy of the G20 Social.

By Tiago Souza

Check out the highlights of the interview

South Africa's priorities and Brasil's legacy: continuing the G20 Social and strengthening the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty

Our agenda will focus on solidarity, equality, and sustainable development. We will discuss important priorities that will support the various broad issues that we want to address. 

One of our priorities is digital technologies, especially the development of artificial intelligence. We have three priority themes: the fight against hunger, climate change and solutions to climate damage, and digital technology, particularly artificial intelligence. We want to ensure this leads to the development of people, guaranteeing social and people's benefit.

We just witnessed a Summit of Excellence and I have expressed my appreciation to President Lula da Silva for its organization, which focused on important issues that affect billions of people around the world. As Africans, we will be inheriting this from Brasil. We have much to do and learn from what has been done. Fundamentally, the focus on development concerns, particularly eradicating world poverty and hunger, reflects many of our development objectives and is a great contribution. 

We are very happy to participate in the launch of the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty and the G20 Social. It's an innovation in the architecture of the G20 that we have been invited to and that will bring thousands of people and expertise from all over the world to contribute to the initiative. 

We are happy that many of the issues raised have been addressed by the leaders. This was very good for us, it is very much in line with our own tradition as a country, where social and religious groups, civil society, business, sports and cultural organizations all played a very important role in ending the nightmare of apartheid. We were invited to this innovation and we want to continue with this new practice that Brasil has started. We will continue the G20 Social during our presidency in 2025.

It was remarkable how Brasil led the process to achieve the final declaration. What we are learning is that in the end, when there is a broad consensus, what we call a sufficient consensus, a declaration must be adopted and it should lead us forward, ensuring the approved principles.

Taxing the super-rich and global governance reform

Another major achievement in Brasil was the focus on issues such as taxing the super-rich. Starting the process and assessing how they could pay more taxes. According to the studies presented, there are 3,000 super-rich people in the world. These studies should develop a structure at a national level, so let's see how that works out. I think it's still something that needs to be worked on.

The reform of institutions of global governance and finance. Brasil's focus on climate change is also something we are grateful for. Overall, it's a very successful outcome of the G20 Summit and provides a solid foundation for South Africa, as we now focus on hosting the next G20 in Johannesburg. I was able to invite all these participating countries, as members and guests, including international organizations, to come to South Africa and take part.

Relations between Brasil and South Africa and the strengthening of the Global South.

The bilateral we had (Brasil and South Africa) addressed several issues on which we cooperate. We are two Global South countries, members of BRICS, we are united in many aspects, and we work extremely well together. During our bilateral meeting with President Lula, we talked about the convergence of our objectives as countries and his desire to go to South Africa to expand our discussions. Of course, we discussed trade between the two countries and that we need to increase the scale of our negotiations in order to enable African companies to export to Brasil as well. Brazilian companies have been major exporters to South Africa, and in general, the conversations were good.

Global South at the center of the discussions

Our strategy for the G20 Summit is a call for inclusion. Let's have all the voices, all the perspectives from as many structures as possible. Africa is our home. We will be committed to making this G20 Afrocentric. Also focusing on the Global South, as Brasil has done. But in our case, it will be our country, the African continent. We have already said publicly that we want to focus on the needs and challenges of the African continent. 

The African Continental Free Trade Area represents a great opportunity. We want all of us Africans to be able to make the best use of this platform, the participation of the countries of the African Continental area. Make use of this opportunity provided by countries that control up to 80% of the world's GDP, trade and economic development.

That is what we want, the African diaspora has an important role to play and we are going to make use of it. We are going to create a platform where people can submit their proposals, whether for South Africa or for the African continent as a whole. For us, this is a very exciting opportunity. We want to use this for positive actions, for working with others, and to focus on the major problems that the world needs to solve. In many ways, the G20 creates a platform that has an impact on the path the world needs to take. This brings us an opportunity and we want to use it.

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