SA’s four priorities – Ramaphosa outlines his G20 presidency goals to delegates

‘This is a forum which has created the current global financial safety net with the IMF at its core, and whose stewardship has proved critical to global stability for a quarter of a century. So, this meeting of the G20 finance ministers and governors … does carry a really heavy and weighty responsibility,” President Ramaphosa said at the Cape Town International Convention Centre on Wednesday, 26 February.

Ramaphosa noted that the finance track of the G20 would need to work in concert with other tracks to enable sustainable, resilient and inclusive global growth.

President Cyril Ramaphosa delivers the official opening address to G20 finance ministers and central bank governors at the Cape Town International Convention Centre on 26 February 2025. (Photo: Kopano Tlape / GCIS)

“At this time of heightened geopolitical tech contestation, a rules-based order is particularly important as a mechanism, as a way for managing disputes and resolving conflicts. There will always be disputes, there will always be conflicts, but as humanity, we have always found a way to resolve those conflicts,” he said.

Delegates heard that South Africa had identified four priorities for  its G20 presidency:

1.     To take action to strengthen disaster resilience and response: “The world is now prone to disasters, both in the developed economy world as well as in the developing economy.

“The increasing rate of climate-induced natural disasters is disproportionately affecting countries that can least afford the costs of recovery and rebuilding, and you talk to any African leader, they will tell you that as disaster strikes, as bridges are washed away, as schools and hospitals are washed away with floods, floods that they have never seen before that they know now emanate from climate change,” Ramaphosa said.

In 2024, the Western Cape alone faced a budgetary shortfall of about R6-billion after a year of unprecedented disasters that devastated families and destroyed infrastructure.

Read more: Year of disasters leaves Western Cape with multibillion-rand shortfall

Severe weather swept across South Africa last week, bringing intense thunderstorms, flash flooding and reports of tornadoes. The South African Weather Service issued warnings for provinces in the central and eastern regions, highlighting the risks of torrential rainfall, strong winds, hail and lightning.

Read more: The struggle of South African schools against extreme weather

Ramaphosa called for innovative financing and insurance mechanisms to be put in place by the global community, financial institutions, development banks and the private sector to scale up funding for disaster prevention and post-disaster reconstruction.

2.     To ensure debt sustainability for developing economies. In recent years, low- and middle-income countries had seen their levels of foreign or sovereign debt and the costs of financing that debt rise substantially, Ramaphosa said.

“The combined external debt stock of low-income countries more than doubled in the decade to 2022. Debt service costs are increasingly crowding out spending on education, on healthcare and other social services, as well as infrastructure that are needed for the economic development in those countries,” Ramaphosa said, adding that the work of the international financial architecture working group and other working groups would be particularly important in improving the common framework for debt treatment, accelerating the reform of multilateral development banks and strengthening capital flows to emerging markets.

Seven African former heads of state had already come together this week to sign the Cape Town Declaration, a decisive call for urgent debt relief and fairer borrowing terms for African nations. Olusegun Obasanjo, former president of Nigeria (chair), Yemi Osinbajo, former vice-president of Nigeria, and five other African former heads of state formed the African leaders’ debt relief initiative. “This initiative focuses on the challenges that many African countries are facing in servicing their national debt,” Ramaphosa said.

3.     To mobilise finance for the just energy transition, significantly more funding is required to limit global temperature rise in line with the goals of the Paris Agreement and to do so in an equitable and just manner.

Ramaphosa said South Africa would continue to advocate for greater concessional and grant funding to support the energy transition in developing economies.

“G20 member countries should lead the way in demonstrating ambition on climate action in the lead-up to the COP30, which will be held in Brazil later this year. The need to rapidly scale up adaptation funding is particularly important as those countries which have contributed the least to climate change are now most vulnerable to its effect. We must also scale up the use of innovative financing instruments,” he said. Over the weekend, the South African Electricity and Energy Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa warned of the risk that the US could pull its share of the International Partners Group’s (IPG’s) funding for South Africa’s Just Energy Transition Investment Plan (JET-IP).

Read more: Ramokgopa warns of risk of US pulling its Just Energy Transition funding

4.     To harness critical minerals for inclusive growth and sustainable development. Hot on the heels of the Investing in African Mining Indaba, Ramaphosa called for a G20 framework on green industrialisation and investment that promoted value addition to critical minerals, minerals that were close to the source of extraction.

“We need to promote the development of low-carbon manufacturing value chains, which can support decarbonisation while promoting growth as minerals extraction accelerates to match the needs of the energy transition,” he said. DM