G20 reporter's notebook: The Social Summit Day 1

Ekurhuleni, South Africa — Every year, the leaders of the world’s largest 20 economies — plus the European and African unions — gather for the G20 Leaders’ Summit. But before the televised handshakes and formal declarations begin, another event is taking place: the G20 Social Summit. Initiated by Brazil during its G20 presidency in 2024, the Social Summit is meant to be a space for civil society, activists, and nonprofit groups to feed into the G20 process. From Tuesday, Nov. 18, to Thursday, Nov. 20, the latest iteration of the Social Summit will take place in Boksburg, South Africa — the nation that, for the last year, has held the G20 presidency. Devex will be covering both the Social Summit and the Leaders’ Summit, which will be hosted in Johannesburg from Saturday, Nov. 22, to Sunday, Nov. 23. Stay tuned for our daily coverage, and flip through our reporter’s notebook for the details beyond the headlines. ICMYI: What are the key issues at stake at the G20 Summit in South Africa? <div id="day1x945am" style="border-top: 3px dotted #ff9900; padding-top: 10px;"></div> <span style="font-weight: bold; color: #636363; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; display:inline;">9:45 a.m:</span> Until about 9 a.m. Tuesday morning, I wasn’t sure if I was actually going to be able to write this update. For weeks, I — and what felt like every other journalist, civil society rep, and activist I spoke with — had been met with radio silence about whether we could actually come to the G20 Social Summit. And despite dozens of emails to the G20 accreditation office, there has been no schedule, information, or calendar of events communicated to journalists like me, nor any details published about what this flagship event was all about. But don’t worry: Your fearless Devex correspondent forged ahead anyway, and showed up after a 15-hour flight, hoping for the best. Tuesday morning, here’s what I found: a sprawling, beautifully manicured conference compound packed with people from across the world. An accreditation center packed with delegates, slowly shuffling their way toward a series of booths to get their badges. And a seemingly secret network of both side and main events, with sessions on tax, cancer care, online child safety, and more peppered across the Birchwood Hotel & OR Tambo Conference Center. I’ll be popping into what I see throughout the day until early afternoon, when South Africa Deputy President Paul Mashatile will address the summit in an official opening. Here we go! <div id="day1x1015am" style="border-top: 3px dotted #ff9900; padding-top: 10px;"></div> <span style="font-weight: bold; color: #707070; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; display:inline;">10:15 a.m.:</span> Swim around the big fish. That’s how Jayati Ghosh, a member of the G20 Extraordinary Committee of Independent Experts on Global Inequality, described how the world should approach fair, equitable taxation to drive down inequality — an issue that gained momentum under Brazil’s G20 presidency in 2024. That progress was largely stalled amid geopolitical tension, pushback, and stalemate throughout 2025. But earlier this year, South Africa’s G20 presidency launched Ghosh’s committee of experts to dig into the drivers of inequality — and in the report they published on Nov. 4, taxation was one of two factors underlying existing inequalities. The big fish in Ghosh’s scenario is the United States, which has absolutely refused to play ball on the issue of international taxation treaties, including by withdrawing from United Nations negotiations on an international tax convention earlier this year. “I don’t have to give you the geopolitical details — I think everybody knows,” said Ghosh, speaking from a stage at the Social Summit. “More and more countries are learning how to swim around the big fish, but they won’t be either willing or able to do so without a lot of pressure from below.” One way of doing that, she added, was to push countries to act as coalitions. Earlier this year, an example of that emerged at the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development: South Africa, Brazil, and Spain launched a coalition focused on taxing the superrich, given that the wealth of the richest 1% has surged by $33.9 trillion over the last decade alone. That’s enough to end global annual poverty 22 times, according to Oxfam data — but despite that, billionaires pay only around 0.3% of their wealth in real taxes. The experts’ report finds that since 2000, the richest 1% have captured 41 cents out of every new dollar of wealth created by the global economy, while the bottom half of humanity received a single cent. “What does that power do?” Ghosh asked. “It allows the extremely wealthy to influence governments, to influence laws, to influence regulations, to influence economic policies, to impact on all the processes which are then presented to us as inevitable.” <div id="day1x1030am" style="border-top: 3px dotted #ff9900; padding-top: 10px;"></div> <span style="font-weight: bold; color: #707070; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; display:inline;">10:30 a.m.:</span> The chief executive officer of the African Union Development Agency told a crowd of hundreds that she’s pushing for women’s, children’s, and newborns’ health to become a “standing agenda item” at the African Union — and that hopes it will become a “continental priority” in the years ahead. “We cannot accept that women die when giving life. It cannot be right,” said Nardos Bekele-Thomas, speaking from a stage at the G20 Social Summit. Though the Sustainable Development Goals are just five years away from their deadline, target 3.1 — reducing the number of mothers who die in childbirth — is dangerously off track. While trends in maternal mortality declined by 40% between 2000 and 2023, the pace of improvement has slowed significantly since 2016, according to data from the World Health Organization, and in 2023, one maternal death occurred every two minutes. “We have to understand that maternal, newborn, and child health are the foundations of health equity,” Bekele-Thomas said. <div id="day1x12pm" style="border-top: 3px dotted #ff9900; padding-top: 10px;"></div> <span style="font-weight: bold; color: #707070; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; display:inline;">12 p.m.:</span> The highest-level panel on Tuesday morning revolved around the health of women, children, and newborns — with speakers from the South African government, United Nations agencies, and African Union pushing for the topic to be higher on the G20 agenda. Again and again, the speakers spoke of the same: Women and girls are facing indescribable challenges, especially when it comes to reproductive health. But it’s up to those in Africa — and across the global south — to change that. “Africa must do it for Africa. The global south must do it for the global south,” said Phumzile Mlambo Ngcuka, the former U.N. under-secretary general and executive director of UN Women, who spoke from a plenary stage. “And we must not expect anyone to tell us how and what we must do.” The G20 Social Summit Declaration, which will be published during the final hours of the gathering on Thursday, is one way of doing so. The declaration is meant to be a bottom-up process, one that pulls the priorities of civil society together and presents them to South African President Cyril Ramaphosa before the Leaders’ Summit begins. The speakers pushed for the inclusion of women’s, children’s, and newborns’ health in that declaration — especially by driving forward what already works in African nations across the world. Including those recommendations in the declaration matters, explained Levi Singh, the head of the Y20 — the G20 platform to engage youth. If the G20 chooses to do so, Singh said, the bloc can play a “critical role” in amplifying the need for women’s, children’s, and newborns’ health advances. Singh gave reproductive health as an example. It’s a sector that Singh said is increasingly coming under attack, but not from the entire G20 — just from a “small minority” of its member states. If the political will is there, he said, the G20 could counter those attacks and elevate the need for reproductive health care across its member states. “Our rights, our choices, and our dignity as Africans, and as people of the global south, are not up for negotiation,” Singh added. <div id="day1x2pm" style="border-top: 3px dotted #ff9900; padding-top: 10px;"></div> <span style="font-weight: bold; color: #707070; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; display:inline;">2 p.m.:</span> Just before 1 p.m., dozens of dancers took to the main stage with traditional drums, whistles, and some fantastic dance moves — and a 13-person chorus, cheered on by several hundred in the audience, followed suit. The ensemble was there to preface the summit’s official opening, which brought South African ministers face-to-face with civil society groups. After over an hour of singing, dancing, and poetry, the main event began — and Alvin Botes, South Africa’s deputy minister of international relations and cooperation, faced a crowd brimming with energy. “Welcome to the land of Nelson Mandela, the rainbow nation of Desmond Tutu,” said Botes, speaking from the main stage. “Good things are happening in South Africa, ladies and gentlemen. The G20 is alive.” Speaker after speaker, one thing was clear: This was Africa’s G20. And regardless of which countries will — or will not — attend the upcoming Leaders’ Summit, the continent will be moving forward in new ways. “The time has come for Africa to transition from being a subject of global policy to being a principal of it,” said William Carew, the head of the African Union ECOSOCC secretariat. “For far too long, we have been reactive, responding to crises manufactured elsewhere, and adapting to frameworks imposed upon us. “We are now charting a course toward self-determination,” Carew added. He pointed to the African Union’s Agenda 2063, the coalition’s blueprint for continent-driven sustainable development, as an example of that process. The G20 Social Summit is being framed as another way to do that, and to feed ideas into the G20 agenda as a whole. “Finally, the G20 is here on African soil, and it will be the best. We can now feel it. We can now see it. We can now touch it,” said Panyaza Lesufi, the premier of South Africa’s Gauteng province, to a thunderous round of cheers. “With or without them, we are proceeding.” Throughout the afternoon, the energy for that sentiment was more than palpable. In the time between one speaker and another, the crowd erupted into their own song and dance, with people swaying to a Zulu chant: We’re not afraid of what we’re doing, people sang. And as the moderators tried to quell the audience, one man shouted with a grin. “This is my G20, this is your G20,” he called out. In response, the moderators acquiesced. For a few more minutes, they let the DJ play out.