G20’s lost opportunity on Africa’s Debt Reforms as Crisis Deepens

By Steve UMIDHA

In 2025, South Africa became the first African country to host the G20 Summit; a moment that culminated in the adoption of the G20 Leaders’ Declaration on 23rd November 2025.

During the closing event, H.E. Ramaphosa hailed the South African presidency of the G20 as a victory for diplomacy   noting: “South Africa has used this Presidency to place the priorities of Africa and the Global South firmly at the heart of the G20 agenda.”

However, the first ever G20 Summit on African soil will be remembered for prioritising diplomacy over Africa’s debt and development crisis. Whilst South Africa’s G20 presidency came at a difficult time for multilateralism, there has barely been any meaningful positive changes throughout the year to address the deepening debt crisis besieging many African countries.

This situation, which has the scale of an emergency, was significantly watered down in the declaration.

South Africa’s presidency fell short of advancing global financial architecture reforms. It also failed to carry forward progressive texts on debt sustainability and credit ratings agencies that were put forward this year in the Common African Position (CAP) on debt as set out in the Lome Declaration.

The declaration puts forward a unified demand for a permanent, rules-based multilateral debt workout mechanism under the UN, which promotes debt transparency and accountability and includes measures to stem illicit financial flows out of the African continent.

The G20 Declaration also failed to commit to the FfD4 outcome – the Sevilla Commitment (Compromiso de Sevilla), particularly Section 50(f), which reflects the spirit of the Common African Position by calling for the initiation of intergovernmental negotiations at the UN on a multilateral sovereign debt workout mechanism.

These omissions amount to an unfair disinclination to acknowledge and address the structural drivers of Africa’s indebtedness.

The declaration is fundamentally promoting a framing of the debt problem as a technical insolvency and liquidity crisis, a recipe that pushes countries down the path of recurrent debt cycles that ultimately fuel the interests of the global North.

We therefore find that the G20 Leaders’ Declaration missed a critical opportunity to offer ambitious debt restructuring mechanisms. This comes at a time when much of Africa’s debt is held by private creditors, accounting for approximately 44% of Africa’s external debt stock according to UNCTAD. This has rendered timely and orderly debt restructuring difficult to achieve.

The G20 Common Framework for example, has failed to deliver swift and effective debt resolution to African countries such as Zambia and Ethiopia. Instead, the process has consistently prioritised private sector profits, while shifting losses onto already weakened governments.

Despite ongoing criticisms by organisations such as AFRODAD and others, which have highlighted how the Common Framework undermines debt sustainability for global south economies, the South African presidency fell short of decisively addressing these concerns.

The declaration instead preserved the status quo G20 Common Framework for debt restructuring, calling for its “strengthening” despite its obvious failings.

The failure of South Africa, and arguably the African Union, to deliver beyond shoptalk and diplomatic niceties will be felt in households across Africa for years to come.  Riska Koopman, International Public and Private Finance Officer at AFRODAD, stated: “Through the Common African Position, African countries cemented a coherent narrative on debt.

South Africa’s G20 Presidency and the Leaders’ declaration water down this attempt by African governments to be willful actors in reforming the global financial architecture to their benefit. The debt challenges facing African governments seep into every fibre of everyday life on the continent and can’t be separated from the urgency of global financial architecture reform.”

Post G20 Summit, tensions between the United States of America and South Africa continue to simmer. Not only did the USA not participate in this year’s G20 but has subsequently uninvited South Africa from their 2026 Summit to be hosted in Florida.

The exit of the USA from multiple multilateral processes, poses an increasing risk to the G20 and threatens progress made on global financial architecture reforms.

The G20’s self-assigned role and positioning as the premier economic forum, where global financial decisions are made and flow from, continues to face criticism and can’t adequately meet the needs of Africa and Global South countries facing debt sustainability challenges.

AFRODAD therefore reaffirms the need to move decision making to more democratic spaces such as the UN, where all countries have a voice and decision making power, and continues to advocate for the establishment of a United Nations Framework Convention on Sovereign Debt – a legally binding mechanism rooted in fairness and equity that can truly provide the urgent multilateral solutions needed to prevent and address Africa’s prevailing debt crises.