The first G20 Summit to be held in Africa opened today, Saturday, November 22, 2025, in South Africa’s capital, Johannesburg, amid a boycott from the US.
The Group of 20 summit started with an ambitious agenda to make progress on solving some of the longstanding problems that have afflicted the world’s poorest nations.
Leaders and top government officials from the richest and leading emerging economies came together at an exhibition centre near the famous Soweto township in South Africa, once home to Nelson Mandela, to try and find some consensus on the priorities set out by the host country.
Many of South Africa’s priorities for the group, including a focus on climate change and its impact on developing countries, have met resistance from the US.
South Africa, which gets to set the agenda as the country holding the rotating presidency, wants leaders to agree to more help for poor countries to recover from climate-related disasters, reduce their foreign debt burdens, transition to green energy sources and harness their own critical mineral wealth – all in an attempt to counter widening global inequality.
The two-day summit is taking place without the world’s biggest economy after President Donald Trump ordered a boycott of the summit over his baseless claims that South Africa is pursuing racist anti-white policies and persecuting its Afrikaner white minority.
The Trump administration has also made clear its opposition to South Africa’s G20 agenda from the start of the year, when it began hosting G20 meetings.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio skipped a G20 Foreign Ministers’ meeting in February, slamming the agenda as being all about diversity, equity and inclusion, and climate change.
G20 summits traditionally end with a leaders’ declaration, which details any broad agreement reached by the members, but even that was proving hard to come by in Johannesburg.
South Africa said that the US was exerting pressure on it not to issue any leaders’ declaration in the absence of the US and instead tone down the final document to a unilateral statement from the host country
President Cyril Ramaphosa responded to that earlier this week by saying “we will not be bullied” and promised a declaration from all members present at the close of the summit on Sunday, with or without US input.
According to the White House, the only role the US will play at this summit will be when a representative from the United States Embassy in South Africa attends the formal handover ceremony at the end to accept the G20 presidency.
South Africa said that it’s an insult for Ramaphosa to hand over to what it considers to be a junior diplomatic official.
Even so, the direction of the G20 bloc is likely to change sharply given that the US takes over the rotating presidency from South Africa at the end of this summit, as the Trump administration has derided the focus on climate change and inequality. Trump has said that the US will stage next year’s summit at his golf club in Doral, Florida.
Ramaphosa Asserts Efforts To Preserve G20’s Integrity
In opening remarks to the historic summit in Johannesburg, the first on the African continent, President Cyril Ramaphosa said that South Africa has sought to preserve the integrity and stature of the Group of 20 (G20) top economies.
Ramaphosa said that South Africa is committed to ensuring that the development priorities of the Global South and Africa find expression in the group’s agenda.
He added that there is an overwhelming consensus that one of the summit’s tasks is to adopt a declaration, emphasising the need for “multilateralism” to confront “the threats facing humanity today.”
Meanwhile, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said “We’ll see” whether the G20 could prioritise developing world countries and make meaningful reforms. “But I think South Africa has done its part in putting those things clearly upon the table,” he added.
Guterres also cautioned that rich nations have often failed to make the concessions required to strike effective climate or global financial reform agreements.
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