Business Leadership South Africa (BLSA) CEO Busisiwe Mavuso has noted the dichotomy between the prestige that comes with South Africa hosting the Group of 20 (G20) summit in 2025 and the geopolitical tensions the country is currently embroiled in – particularly with the US.

“On the one hand, we put our best foot forward in both the Business 20 (B20) and G20 launches, and . . . Cape Town blessed us with good weather. On the other hand, we observed ongoing tensions in geopolitics,” she said in her weekly newsletter on March 3.

Last week, the Science 20 (S20) was also launched in Pretoria to discuss climate change, energy challenges and other matters of international scientific concern.

The B20 is a business community diplomatic undertaking that connects with the G20 later this year, to ensure business leaders from around the world can develop and table policy proposals with an action-orientated mindset.

Business leaders from across corporate South Africa attended the launch of the B20 presidency.

The B20 is co-chaired by Business Unity South Africa and BLSA.

At the recent gala dinner, BLSA chairperson Nonkululeko Nyembezi delivered a keynote address that contextualised the significance of the B20 outcomes, highlighting their importance and relevance.

At this event, B20 sherpa Cas Coovadia emphasised that this marked the first time the B20 was being held in Africa, illustrating the continent's growing influence in global economic affairs.

There was acknowledgement of the adverse environment in which this year’s iteration of the B20 was taking place and that some of the policy recommendations would now have to be developed in a notably different geopolitical context.

“The coherent Western alliance that is responsible for the long peace that has held since 1945 in global affairs is crumbling, creating a grave responsibility for us during our year of hosting the G20,” Mavuso said.

At the B20 launch, World Economic Forum CEO Børge Brende, noted that “South Africa has vast experience in handling conflict and competition; this is not an easy G20 with the geopolitical backdrop of what is happening – but you are well placed”.

Mavuso said multilateral trade remained key to global economic growth with strong trends driven by services and digitisation over the medium term.

“We must find a way to ignore the noise and focus on issues around energy transition, climate change and new technologies like AI,” she said.

However, relations with the US could not be ignored, with Brende noting that the US would continue to play a significant role in the global economy, accounting for 30% of global trade and half of global military capability.

International Finance Corporation VP Susan Lund spoke of the important role that Africa played in the global economy.

She said that, with Africa’s influence and economic strength growing, private investors were taking notice, resulting in a significant rise in investment over the past few years.

Lund pointed out that South Africa and the continent in general had growing populations while key global economic nodes were shrinking. She believed that Africa possessed the workforce, markets, critical minerals and arable land needed to succeed, and so needed to be central to a longer-term vision for the next phase of global growth.

She also pointed to the role of credit rating agencies, whose methodologies and outcomes she claimed were biased and had a negative affect on emerging economies.

Apart from matters relating to the US and China, much of the conversation was geared towards regional importance.

“That is important for how South Africa thinks of its future. We must be key in building the proposition of Africa as a regional bloc, which means embedding ourselves in the region. We need our logistics system to be capable of driving regional trade and we must focus on the African Continental Free Trade Area Agreement to make it happen,” Mavuso said.

On the G20 programme, last week also saw the finance summit taking place in Cape Town, bringing together finance ministers from member States.

Global uncertainty and escalating tensions were also much discussed, with President Cyril Ramaphosa stating during a speech that “… the erosion of multilateralism presents a threat to global growth and stability”.

Mavuso said the G20 finance ministers should tackle issues such as financing climate change and debt sustainability in developing countries. 

However, she acknowledged that the event could not find enough alignment to be able to issue a joint communique, which she saw as another example of the fractious geopolitical environment.

“I felt after the launch events last week that the B20 and G20 present South Africa with both an enormous opportunity and responsibility. Wider events mean that the G20, as a core institution of the multilateral system, has a critical role to play in setting a ‘new normal’ for international relations and cooperation.

“The B20 will play a very important part in that process, identifying, developing and advocating for new ways of doing business and confronting our global challenges together. I felt very positive last week that South Africans will rise to the challenge and provide leadership to the world with our business community working prominently to support the effort,” Mavuso said.

She believed, however, that the country’s domestic agenda, remained critical in the process.

BLSA hosted Trade, Industry and Competition Minister Parks Tau at the BLSA Council to present his proposal for the controversial proposed transformation fund, where he outlined the government’s focus on its transformation agenda and what it believed still needed to be done to achieve its goals.

Given the State’s inability to finance the fund on its own without raising taxes, Tau implored the private sector to become the fund’s co-creators with government.

“The fund concept has the potential to help companies meet their black economic empowerment obligations. This fund could enable small and medium-sized companies who do not have the resources to build their own social and enterprise development programmes. The key question would be how that fund is well governed and deploys the resources where most beneficial and effective,” Mavuso said.

She acknowledged that South Africa faced significant challenges both at home and abroad, and that while there were “promising opportunities” ahead, considerable effort would be required to realise them.

“We continue to monitor our relationship [with] the US and believe we can find resolutions with open lines of communication,” Mavuso said.