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In 2025, South Africa hosted the final, challenging year of the first cycle of G20 presidencies, bringing together significant emerging market and developed economies. But 2026, with the United States hosting the G20 summit in Miami, promises to be even more contentious. US President Donald Trump’s vocal disdain for multilateralism, coupled with his decision to disinvite South Africa from this year’s G20, is likely setting another turbulent year for the forum.
The South African G20 presidency sought to uphold the ‘solidarity, equality and sustainability’ themes it had advanced during its tenure. According to its President, Cyril Ramaphosa, ‘South Africa [used its] presidency to place the priorities of Africa and the Global South firmly at the heart of the G20 agenda’. South Africa’s term followed three consecutive years of Global South G20 leadership — Indonesia, India and Brazil — all of which sought to shift priorities towards global development issues including climate change, inequality and debt sustainability.
Tensions surrounding the South African G20 summit emerged early, with President Ramaphosa’s visit to Washington in May 2025. In a meeting at the Oval Office, Trump made false accusations of a genocide against white South African farmers and showed Ramaphosa a video purportedly substantiating the claims. Trump further escalated these tensions, stating ‘it is a total disgrace that the G20 will be held in South Africa. Afrikaners are being killed and slaughtered, and their land and farms are being illegally confiscated … I look forward to hosting the 2026 G20 in Miami, Florida!’.
But even US threats of boycotts did not prevent South Africa from advancing its agenda, which included global development, development financing and ‘moving the yardsticks’ on energy and climate. South Africa also established three high-level task forces: Inclusive Economic Growth, Industrialization, Employment and Reduced Inequality; Food Security; and Artificial Intelligence, Data Governance and Innovation for Sustainable Development.
In November, as Binaifer Nowrojee describes, ‘the leaders of Brazil, South Africa and Spain jointly announced support for creating an International Panel on Inequality, modelled on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The initiative was intended to build on other recent efforts, including the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty, launched under Brazil’s G20 presidency, and the Sevilla Platform for Action, where UN countries committed to cooperate on reforming tax rules and restructuring debt to finance development’.
In the end, Trump did in fact boycott the Johannesburg summit. And as it turned out, other heads of government including those from China, Russia, Argentina, Mexico, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia all chose to skip the summit. But unlike the United States, senior officials did attend in their place.
The United States also insisted that a leaders’ declaration was not possible given its absence. While there was reluctance on part of some countries including Japan, Italy and Argentina to issue a declaration, all those attending ultimately adopted the South Africa Declaration.
The United States made it clear that, as the 2026 host, it intends to significantly narrow the forum’s focus. The State Department announced that Trump’s leadership will see the G20 return ‘to focusing on its core mission of driving economic growth and prosperity to produce results’. The US G20 site remains a single web page announcing ‘The Best is Yet to Come’ along with an image of President Trump in a USA cap. That’s it.
The G20@20 Review, undertaken in response to the 2024 Rio de Janeiro Declaration, recommended that the G20’s agenda be more strongly focused on its core mandate of promoting strong, sustainable, balanced and inclusive growth. The review also called for a streamlining of the number of workstreams.
But the disinvitation of South Africa to the 2026 summit by the Trump administration has not gone unopposed by other G20 members. Peter Fabricius writes that ‘the European Union, the African Union, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, China, Canada, Brazil “and several others” had all told the US sherpas that South Africa should be in the G20’.
The US reduction of collective efforts for the 2026 G20 summit appears ill-considered. The United States has indicated that its presidency will host only one meeting of finance ministers and central bank governors, and has apparently approved only one Engagement Group gathering, the Business 20.
Without South Africa, the United States has abandoned the troika — the past, current and future hosts — which is generally considered an important instrument of coordination across summits. Instead, the United States has announced it will consult with the UK and South Korean presidencies, being the hosts for 2027 and 2028. While there has been growing concern over the growing size and agenda of the G20, these actions raise questions about the United States’ ability to effectively coordinate and manage G20 efforts.
Whether these and other US actions will improve or undermine the G20 process is very much in question. But the current collective tensions and disagreements may not be foretelling the end of the G20 and other multilateral efforts. As Martin Sandbu observes, plurilateral ‘coalitions of the willing’ have been capable of carrying forward global governance policy where consensus has been simply unachievable.
The hope is that plurilateral groupings will continue to advance G20 initiatives and global governance efforts. Plurilateralism may not be a perfect solution, but it provides a way forward immediately in an increasingly contentious and fragmented world.
Alan Alexandroff is Director of the Global Summitry Project (GSP) and Co-Chair with Colin Bradford of the Changing World Dialogue (CWD).
This article is part of an EAF special feature series on 2025 in review and the year ahead.
date:2026-02-14 23:00:00
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