South Africa hailed for a succesful G20: Sanusha Naidu

The article is a transcript of a media interview with Senusha Naidu, a senior researcher at the Institute for Global Dialogue, discussing the conclusion of South Africa's G20 presidency in 2025, which it assumed from Brazil the previous year. The summit in Nazareth is widely regarded as a success, highlighted by the adoption of a consensus declaration that emphasized African development issues, including debt relief, inequality, the Compact with Africa 2.0, cost of capital challenges, and the African Expert Panel report. Naidu praises South Africa's role in frontloading these priorities onto the G20 agenda but cautions against over-reliance on the G20, noting its lack of a formal secretariat and the evolving global architecture amid a 'dystopian' order. Criticisms include the declaration's vagueness, with no firm timelines or implementation details, requiring bottom-up domestication and regionalization of commitments. The US absence from the summit—due to unspecified reasons—is acknowledged as signaling potential difficulties in the upcoming US presidency in 2026, yet the declaration implicitly recognizes this while looking forward to a more stable 2027 meeting in the UK. Despite the US's integral role, Naidu argues the world functioned without it, enhancing South Africa's credibility and legitimacy as a global actor capable of securing consensus without a major power. She emphasizes strategic partnerships with African Union members and others (e.g., IBSA summit with India and Brazil, trilateral digital innovation with India, Australia, and Canada, and UAE funding pledges) to sustain momentum. For the US presidency, South Africa should approach strategically, guarding against potential embarrassments, but recognize waning US dominance and a growing trust deficit with Europe. Business engagements, like a major US retailer's expansion in South Africa during the summit, underscore ongoing opportunities. President Cyril Ramaphosa's immediate travel to an Angola summit post-G20 illustrates South Africa's active global role, with the interview stressing the need for a G20 review at 20 to adapt to realignments in international order.