What to know about this weekend’s G20 summit in South Africa

Johannesburg: Leaders from the Group of 20 countries will meet for a summit in South Africa this weekend without any US representatives after President Donald Trump announced a boycott over his widely rejected claims that the host country is persecuting its Afrikaner white minority.

Trump’s decision to pull the United States - and himself - out of the talks in Johannesburg is likely to undermine the first G20 leaders’ meeting in Africa, as well as South Africa’s aim to push for progress on issues affecting poor countries, such as the impact of climate change, the cost of green energy transition and spiraling sovereign debt levels.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping also won’t attend as he cuts back on international travel, meaning the heads of the world’s two biggest economies will skip a meeting meant to bring developed and developing countries together to tackle pressing global issues.

A bridge between rich and developing nations

The G20 is a group of 19 countries that includes the richest but also the top developing economies in the world. The European Union and the African Union, which joined in 2023, are also members, making it now a group of 21.

It was formed in 1999 and unlike the Group of Seven, which only includes the richest democracies, it offers some developing countries a forum to raise their problems.

Its focus is the global economy and international development, though it has no charter or permanent secretariat - unlike organisations such as the United Nations. It also doesn’t issue binding decisions and critics say there’s no meaningful mechanism for it to put words into action.

The G20 often struggles to reach real consensus because of the different interests of the big powers like the US, China and Russia, as well as those of Western European nations.

The leaders of the United Nations, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund typically attend G20 summits as guests.

The US boycott

Trump has claimed that white Afrikaner farmers in South Africa are being killed and that their land is being seized, calling it a disgrace that South Africa is hosting the summit and saying it should be thrown out of the G20.

The South African government and others, including some Afrikaners themselves, have rejected Trump’s claims of racial persecution as misinformation.

South Africa has been a target for Trump since he returned to office at the start of the year, with his administration casting the country as anti-American because of its diplomatic ties with China, Russia and Iran.

The US will take over the rotating presidency of the G20 from South Africa and while the world’s biggest economy will boycott the talks, a representative from the US Embassy in South Africa will attend a formal handover ceremony at the end of the summit, a White House official said.

The main issues

The country holding the G20 presidency gets to set the agenda for the annual summit.

South Africa wants climate change and disaster relief, financing green energy transition, easing debt levels for poor countries and addressing global inequality to be priorities for the two-day meeting.

It says climatic disasters such as drought, floods and cyclones are having a devastating effect on countries that cannot afford to rebuild and is calling for more help from the global community.

South Africa has proposed that G20 leaders set up an independent international panel on global wealth inequality, similar to the UN-appointed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

That followed a report commissioned by South Africa for the summit and led by Nobel Prize-winning American economist Joseph Stiglitz that concluded the world is facing an “inequality emergency.”

G20 summits have traditionally attracted protests, and a counter summit was organized this week in another part of Johannesburg by groups critical of the G20 and what they called “a global economic system rigged in favor of elites and billionaires.”

The summit also is an opportunity for closed-door bilateral meetings. New trade deals are likely to figure in the discussions in the wake of the Trump administration’s tariffs that have impacted the global economy.

Absent leaders

Trump and Xi are the highest profile absentees, although China has sent a government delegation led by Premier Li Qiang.

Russian President Vladimir Putin also is not attending but Russia will be represented by a low-level delegation led by Maxim Oreshkin, deputy chief of staff of the Russian presidential executive office. Putin faces an arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court over Russia’s war in Ukraine that obliges South Africa, a signatory to the Rome Statute that established the court, to arrest him if he sets foot on its territory.

Argentina’s President Javier Milei is also to skip the summit in solidarity with his ally Trump.

“If you boycott an event or a process, you are the greatest loser because the show will go on,” Ramaphosa said of Trump’s decision not to attend.

French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer say they will attend the summit.