Africa’s first G20 summit opens with an ambitious agenda and tries to move on from Trump’s boycott

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — The first Group of 20 summit to be held in Africa opens on Saturday with an ambitious agenda to make progress on solving some of the long-standing problems that have afflicted the world’s poorest nations.

Leaders and top government officials from the richest and leading emerging economies will come together at an exhibition center near the famous Soweto township in South Africa — once home to Nelson Mandela — to try and find some consensus on the priorities set out by the host country.

They include more help for poor countries to recover from climate-related disasters, reduce their foreign debt burdens, transition to green energy sources and harness their own critical mineral wealth — all in an attempt to counter widening global inequality.

“We’ll see,” United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said on if the G20 could prioritize developing world countries and make meaningful reforms. “But I think South Africa has done its part in putting those things clearly upon the table.”

The two-day summit will take place without the world’s biggest economy after United States President Donald Trump ordered a U.S. boycott of the summit over his claims that South Africa is pursuing racist anti-white policies and persecuting its Afrikaner white minority.

A monthslong diplomatic rift between the U.S. and South Africa deepened in the buildup, but while Trump’s boycott dominated the pre-talks talk in Johannesburg and threatened to undercut the agenda, some of the leaders were eager to move on.

“I do regret it,” French President Emmanuel Macron said of Trump’s absence, “but it should not block us. Our duty is to be present, engage and work all together because we have so many challenges.”

The G20 is actually a group of 21 members that includes 19 nations, the European Union and the African Union.

The bloc was formed in 1999 as a bridge between rich and poor nations to confront global financial crises. While it often operates in the shadow of the Group of Seven richest democracies, G20 members together represent around 85% of the world’s economy, 75% of international trade and more than half the global population.

But it works on consensus rather than any binding resolutions, and that is often hard to come by with the different interests of members like the U.S., Russia, China, India, Japan, the Western European nations France, Germany and the U.K., and others like Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and South Africa.

Guterres cautioned that rich nations have often failed to make the concessions required to strike effective climate or global financial reform agreements.

G20 summits traditionally end with a leaders’ declaration — which details any broad agreement reached by the members — but even that was proving hard to come by in Johannesburg.

South Africa said the U.S. was exerting pressure on it not to issue any leaders’ declaration in the absence of the U.S. and instead tone down the final document to a unilateral statement from the host country.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa responded to that by saying “we will not be bullied” and has promised a declaration from all members present at the close of the summit on Sunday.

Even so, the direction of the G20 bloc is likely to change sharply given the U.S. takes over the rotating presidency from South Africa at the end of this summit and the Trump administration has derided the focus on climate change and inequality.

The only role the U.S. will play at this summit, the White House said, will be when a representative from the United States Embassy in South Africa attends the formal handover ceremony at the end to accept the G20 presidency.

South Africa said it’s an insult for Ramaphosa to hand over to what it considers to be a junior diplomatic official.

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