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. (Photograph by EMMANUEL CROSET / AFP by way of Getty Photos)
Emmanuel Croset | Afp | Getty Photos
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 conversant in the matter stated, in a shock transfer {that a} senior White Home official described as “shameful”.
A type 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 brought on by 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 must always undertake proper firstly 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 must always not permit 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, extensively 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 creating nations adapt to climate disasters, transition to scrub power and reduce 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 recommended it is perhaps 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 succeed in settlement on a draft declaration.
The US had objected to any point out of local weather or renewable power within the dialogue, and another members are sometimes reticent about it.
Three out of 4 of South Africa’s deliberate prime agenda objects – getting ready for climate-induced climate disasters, financing the transition to inexperienced power, and guaranteeing the push for important minerals advantages producers – are carefully linked to local weather change.
The fourth is a couple of extra equitable system of borrowing for poor nations.
The US 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.