The T20 South Africa Inception Conference held virtually on 5 and 6 March 2025, was focused on the five Task Forces. IDOS Deputy Director (interim), Dr Axel Berger, stresses WTO reform importance and the G20’s role in promoting cooperative trade policies.
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Hosted by the Institute for Global Dialogue (IGD) associated with UNISA, the South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA), and the Institute for Pan-African Thought and Conversation (IPATC) at the University of Johannesburg, the conference stood under three main objectives: To clarify the T20’s purpose supporting the G20 agenda, to outline South Africa’s vision for T20 including defining priorities and thematic focus areas, and to establish a foundation for a future collaboration of the think tanks of the T20 with the official G20 processes under the South African presidency.
The agenda included two days full of reflections, inputs and reports from the five Task Forces focusing on Trade and Investment (TF1), Digital Transformation (TF2), Financing for Sustainable Development (TF3), solidarity for the achievement of the SDGs (TF4) and the Just Energy Transition (TF5), brought into early dialogue with South African government representatives from corresponding departments.
As Co-Chair of the Task Force on Trade and Investment, Dr Axel Berger delivered remarks on the ambition of the task force and the context in which it takes up its work. He outlined how disruptive and polarised politics are threatening established trade principles and multilateral agreements on trade and investment. This makes it all the more important to advance the reform of the World Trade Organization, whilst finding ways to safeguard the G20 processes as an informal and dialogue-based forum for moving forward cooperative trade policies – including considering the potential necessity of a G20 minus one approach.
The inception conference also included remarks from Mr Zane Dangor, G20 South Africa Sherpa and several other high-ranking South African government representatives. Mr Dangor delivered a powerful plea for reforming the multilateral system whilst protecting it from attempts to dismantle it. He emphasised the importance of the T20 in bringing together thought leaders and research capacities from the Global North and the Global South to advance evidenced based policies and urged the T20 to bring in their weight against politics solely based on narrowly conceived national interests.
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