ISTANBUL
South Africa’s G20 presidency will highlight solidarity, equality and sustainable development, said the country’s president Tuesday in his address to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
“We will seek to get the G20 to focus more on how we can enhance solidarity through collective efforts to ensure that in the pursuit of progress for all, no person and no country is left behind,” Cyril Ramaphosa said.
This is an era marked by escalating geopolitical tensions, unilateralism, nationalism, protectionism, isolationism as well as increasing debt, and a diminishing sense of common purpose, Ramaphosa said, adding: “We are called upon by the exigency of the moment to act together with greater urgency to halt the destruction of our planet.”
South Africa’s priorities for its G20 presidency will include mobilizing finance for a just energy transition and securing agreements to enhance the quality and quantity of climate finance flow for developing countries, as agreed at various UN climate change summits, he stated.
“We need a G20 framework on green industrialization and investments to ensure progress towards a grand bargain that promotes value addition to critical minerals close to the source of extraction,” the South African president added.
South Africa aims to use its G20 presidency to advocate for the role of critical minerals in driving growth and development in Africa as well as the Global South through green industrialization, he added.
“This is a moment of great significance for South Africa, the African continent and the world in that it was in Africa where humans developed the capacity and the impulse for cooperation,” Ramaphosa said.
