South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa delivers remarks throughout a working dinner for invited African heads of state and authorities on the Sandton Conference Centre in Sandton on November 21, 2025, forward of the G20 leaders’ Summit. (Picture by EMMANUEL CROSET / AFP by way of Getty Pictures)
Emmanuel Croset | Afp | Getty Pictures
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, host of this weekend’s gathering of Group of 20 leaders, stated on Saturday there was “overwhelming consensus” for a summit declaration regardless of the US boycotting the occasion.
G20 envoys drew up a draft leaders’ declaration on Friday with out U.S. enter, 4 sources acquainted with the matter stated, in a shock transfer {that a} senior White Home official described as “shameful”.
A kind of sources confirmed that the draft made references to local weather change, regardless of objections from the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump, who doubts the scientific consensus that warming is attributable to human actions.
In opening remarks to the Johannesburg summit, Ramaphosa stated: “There’s been overwhelming consensus and settlement that one of many different duties we should always undertake proper in the beginning is to … undertake our declaration.”
He thanked all delegations who had labored along with South Africa “in good religion to supply a worthy G20 final result doc”.
“We should always not enable something to decrease the worth, the stature and the influence of the primary African G20 presidency,” he continued.
Trump rejects South Africa’s G20 agenda
Trump stated U.S. officers wouldn’t attend the summit due to allegations, broadly discredited, that the host nation’s Black majority authorities persecutes its white minority.
The U.S. president has additionally rejected the host nation’s agenda of selling solidarity and serving to growing nations adapt to climate disasters, transition to scrub vitality and minimize their extreme debt prices.
The boycott had put a dampener on Ramaphosa’s plans to trumpet South Africa’s function in selling multilateral diplomacy, however some analysts urged it could be a profit, if different members embrace the summit’s agenda and make headway on a substantive declaration.
It was not clear what concessions needed to be made on the language to achieve settlement on a draft declaration.
America had objected to any point out of local weather or renewable vitality within the dialogue, and another members are sometimes reticent about it.
Three out of 4 of South Africa’s deliberate high agenda objects – getting ready for climate-induced climate disasters, financing the transition to inexperienced vitality, and making certain the frenzy for crucial minerals advantages producers – are carefully linked to local weather change.
The fourth is a few extra equitable system of borrowing for poor nations.
America will host the G20 in 2026 and Ramaphosa stated he must hand over the rotating presidency to an “empty chair”. The South African presidency has rejected a U.S. provide to ship the U.S. cost d’affaires for the G20 handover.
