adminPeter Fabricius Correspondent
President Mugabe will represent the African Union (AU) at the next summit of the Group of Twenty (G20) in Antalya, Turkey, on November 15 and 16 this year.Africa will also be represented by the chairperson of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) Heads of State and Government Orientation Committee, Senegal’s President Macky Sall.
President Mugabe and Sall will be there as part of the G20’s outreach programme to non-members of the G20.
The G20 has an agenda with considerable relevance to the development of Africa (and elsewhere) mainly through its Development Working Group.
That includes reforming the international tax system to try to ensure multinational corporations pay due taxes in the countries where they do business (including Africa); streamlining and reducing the costs of the transfer of remittances to developing countries; and helping developing countries mobilise revenues domestically.
These issues have large potential for increasing development finance. South Africa is the only African member of the G20. And so President Jacob Zuma will also, presumably, be in Antalya.
However, he will not, essentially, be there as a representative of Africa — but only of South Africa.
As local officials point out, South Africa has no mandate from Africa to represent its interests at the G20.
It is interesting to note, in passing, that Pretoria seems to be downplaying its African representivity in the G20 more, now that Nigeria has overtaken South Africa as the continent’s largest economy.
This suggests that South Africa is feeling a threat that it could be displaced — even though most observers believe that it is doing a better job than Nigeria could.
South Africa is more integrated into the international economy and has better financial institutions — all the more relevant in the G20, which is so financially oriented.
And South Africa has done a good job, in fact, of representing African interests indirectly and unofficially through its participation in the G20’s Development Working Group, as well as more directly, by providing feedback of G20 work to the AU and the African Development Bank.
Yet, all in all, South Africa’s membership and the outreach to the AU and NEPAD leaders do not amount to adequate African G20 representation. But whose fault is that?
Africa is always complaining about being insufficiently represented in international organisations.
Yet Catherine Grant-Makokera points out, in an article published by the SA Institute of International Affairs, that Africa is missing an opportunity for effective representation on the G20.
She explains that the real work of the G20 is carried out not so much at the annual summit but in the countless committees, working groups and so on, between summits.
Last year, for instance, Australia, as the 2014 G20 president, held more than 60 such meetings.
She says Senegal, holding the NEPAD chair and Mauritania, holding the AU chair for the year, were invited to attend most of those.
But they chose not to, and instead only sent Mauritian President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz and Senegalese President Sall to the summit in Brisbane.
One might have expected instead that the AU Commission and the NEPAD secretariat would have sent officials with relevant expertise to the G20 working meetings, who would have been able to make a more substantive contribution than the two presidents.
But it would seem Africa chose to be represented more symbolically than substantively.
“In short, opportunities are available for African countries to be better represented at the G20, but to date these have not yet been utilised effectively and it is not fair to put the burden on South Africa to do this alone,” writes Grant-Makokera.
“South Africa has its national interests to consider in the first instance, and also no official mandate from other African countries to play a broader role within the G20.”
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