The G20’s leadership is heading away from the Global South just as debt problems in poorer countries threaten to flare again, testing whether the group’s ambitions on debt relief will translate into action under a United States presidency.

South Africa on Sunday (November 23 , 2025) handed the G20 presidency over to the United States, completing a run of four major emerging economies, including Indonesia, India and Brazil, steering the group, years in which debt sustainability across developing nations became an increasingly prominent priority. Debt across emerging economies has hit a record high, topping more than $100 trillion.

In Africa, the topic is acute: with the International Monetary Fund warning that some 20 African countries were in or at high risk of debt distress.

“It’s important that we find solutions and not just tinker at the margins,” said Trevor Manuel, former South African finance minister and chair of the G20 Africa Expert Panel, which has been advising South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa. Senegal emerged as a flashpoint after billions of dollars in undisclosed borrowing prompted the IMF to freeze a $1.8 billion programme and triggered a sharp ratings downgrade. Gabon has turned to liability-management deals to ease repayment pressure, including regional bond swaps worth about $1 billion. Mozambique has sought advisers for a restructuring, while Malawi’s debt levels are nearing 90% of GDP.

While the G20 launched the Common Framework in 2020, designed to pave the way for swift debt reworks for poorer nations after the COVID pandemic, progress in overhauling the international financial architecture has been slow.

G20 efforts and the limitations of the common framework

South Africa tried to reinvigorate efforts during its year as G20 chair. The group’s finance ministers issued a stand-alone Ministerial Declaration on Debt Sustainability — the first since the pandemic — and committed to strengthening the Common Framework.

The framework has delivered debt treatments to four nations — Chad, Zambia, Ghana, and Ethiopia — since its launch.

Eric LeCompte, executive director of development group Jubilee USA Network, said this showed the limitations.

But he said the agenda of the United States, which will lead the G20 until late 2026, included addressing debt challenges, boosting economic growth and expanding job creation — offering some continuity.

LeCompte said the G20 Africa Engagement Framework, launched in October by its finance ministers to address hurdles to growth and development on the continent, marked an accomplishment.

It will deal with issues “from economic growth to debt and financing to development to anti-poverty initiatives to creating jobs across the continent,” said LeCompte.

Shifting priorities and the path to reform

Vera Songwe, a member of the economic advisory council of President Ramaphosa, said there needed to be revisions to the debt sustainability framework, particularly those that improve financing conditions for poorer nations.

“When multilateral development banks use guarantees, they should not be penalised,” she said, underscoring calls for reforms of the Basel Framework to reduce borrowing costs.

The G20 had shown in the past it can make a difference — from post-2008 financial crisis stimulus packages to the COVID-era Debt Service Suspension Initiative — but it has limits, said Gilad Isaacs of South Africa’s Institute for Economic Justice.

“It doesn’t make policy. It’s got no legal standing,” he said. “We will have to find other spaces to drive those conversations and those changes”, including a proposed borrowers’ platform.

South Africa’s Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana said he would push forward the group’s recommendations from the past year, including the institutionalisation of debt relief efforts.

The G20 nations hold enormous potential to ease suffering and set the world on a more peaceful course, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has said, urging the bloc to lead the action required.

Mr. Guterres made the remarks at a media briefing shortly after arriving in Johannesburg on Friday (November 21, 2025) to participate in the G20 Leaders’ Summit for the next two days.

G20 Summit: Follow LIVE updates on November 21, 2025

“My message to G20 leaders over the next two days is simple. Now is the time for leadership and vision,” Mr. Guterres said as he cited conflicts, climate chaos, economic uncertainty, inequality and a collapse in global aid as causes of inflicting massive suffering around the world.

He added that rising military spending is drawing resources away from development.

“As the world’s largest economies, the G20 nations can hold enormous influence to ease suffering, ensure that economic growth is widely shared, and set our world on a better, more peaceful course for the future,” he said.

Mr. Guterres said that during the Summit, he would call on G20 members to use their leverage to lead the required action needed.

“Developing countries – in particular in Africa – are suffering from a perfect storm of shrinking fiscal space, crushing debt burdens, and a global financial architecture that is failing to support – or even represent – them adequately.

“Today, Africa remains woefully under-represented across global institutions. This must change,” the U.N. chief said.

Mr. Guterres said many decisions at global financial institutions are disproportionately in the hands of some G20 members across the governance bodies of these institutions.

“Africa must have a fair seat in every forum where decisions are made – from the boards of international financial institutions to permanent seats in the United Nations Security Council, and to other global bodies,” he said.

“The G20 can help repair this historic injustice and drive reforms that give developing countries – and Africa in particular – a real voice in shaping global policies, and make global economic governance more inclusive, representative, equitable and effective in the years ahead,” Mr. Guterres proposed.

He urged G20 members to live up to the commitments made in June in the Financing for Development Conference in Sevilla to unlock more finance for developing countries, triple the lending power of multilateral development banks, and increase their role in leveraging more private finance.

Mr. Guterres also made a plea for G20 members to ease debt burdens with new instruments to reduce borrowing costs and risks, and expedite support for countries facing debt distress, drawing on recommendations from the U.N.’s debt expert group.

“Too many developing countries – especially in Africa – find themselves at the bottom of value chains, or locked out of trade opportunities. G20 members can lead the way by dismantling trade barriers and ensuring trade-free access to their markets for the poorest countries,” he said.

Other issues that the Secretary-General said he would raise with the G20 members included inequality that concentrated power and eroded trust in democracy; urgent attention to climate change; and the just transition to renewable energy.

“Corporations are pocketing record profits from climate devastation. And lobbyists continue to greenwash the truth, while developing countries are locked out of a greener future,” he said.

Mr. Guterres said he would also ask G20 members to use their influence and voices to end the conflicts causing death, destruction and destabilisation around the world, including in Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Sahel, Mali, Ukraine, Gaza, Haiti, Yemen and Myanmar.