World
G20-Africa Challenging Geopolitics, Innovating Agenda for Global South’s Development
By Kestér Kenn Klomegâh
In an interview (Q&A) in mid-August 2025, Ms Tandiwe Thelma Mgxwati, Minister Plenipotentiary and Charge d’Affaires a.i. at the South African Embassy, discussed South Africa’s presidency of G20 and its influence on Africa, in the context of geopolitical changes. Tandiwe Mgxwati further underlined the African Union’s full membership in the G20 as an important organisational instrument through which to seriously seek G20’s support for infrastructure development, digital transformation, industrialisation, and innovation ecosystems—key elements of both Agenda 2063 and national development plans. Here are the interview excerpts:
What is the significance of South Africa’s presidency of the G20 in 2025?
South Africa’s presidency of the G20 in 2025 is of profound historical and geopolitical significance. It marks the first time an African country leads the G20 at Summit level since its inception in 1999, and it coincides with the African Union’s recent inclusion as a permanent G20 member in 2023. The South African presidency symbolises a growing recognition of Africa’s role in the global economy and affirms the need for more inclusive and representative international governance frameworks. For South Africa, the presidency is a platform to assert the voice of the Global South and demonstrate leadership in shaping multilateral responses to shared challenges including inequality, climate change, debt, and technology governance.
In institutional terms, South Africa’s presidency strengthens Africa’s ability to influence G20 policy outcomes and reform debates, particularly regarding the international financial architecture. It also consolidates South Africa’s profile as a credible bridge-builder between developed and developing economies. With the G20 Johannesburg Summit scheduled for 22-23 November 2025, this presidency presents an opportunity for Africa to shape global discussions on sustainable development and resilience in a time of polycrisis, while promoting solidarity between emerging economies and major powers. For the very same reasons, we are taking our G20 presidency to the African continent in three separate events planned for Egypt (on Food Security), Ethiopia (on the Compact with Africa) and Nigeria (on Industrialisation and Agriculture) later this year.
How does South Africa plan to push its own and that of Africa’s development ambitions within the context of the G20?
South Africa has defined the overarching theme of its presidency as “Solidarity, Equality, Sustainability”, capturing the urgent need to address historical development imbalances, promote inclusive growth, and respond to existential threats such as climate change. The country has identified three core Task Forces in the following fields : (1) Inclusive economic growth, industrialisation, and employment creation; (2) Food security (a critical issue for Africa); and (3) The governance and application of artificial intelligence and innovation for sustainable development. These priorities are fully aligned with the African Union’s Agenda 2063 and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
To ensure alignment with African development objectives, South Africa has established a structured engagement process with the African Union Commission and African institutions such as the African Development Bank. The G20 Africa Advisory Group, revitalised under South African leadership, serves as a platform for advancing African priorities within the G20 Sherpa Track. Furthermore, South Africa is promoting coordination with BRICS partners, G77 members, and regional economic communities of Africa to build a unified voice on key issues including debt restructuring, concessional finance, and technology transfer. The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) is also being mainstreamed into G20 trade and investment discussions under South Africa’s chairmanship.
In the Finance track, we have also established a team to work on the Review of the Cost of Capital – a very important issue that needs special attention due to the heavy load carried by so many African countries when it comes to debt and the cost of serving it.
What are your assessment on the questions relating to G20 members boosting economic partnership with Africa?
There is growing recognition within the G20 that Africa must be seen as a partner for mutual prosperity rather than a passive recipient of aid. South Africa strongly supports the evolution of G20–Africa economic relations toward long-term, transformative partnerships that deliver industrial capacity, human capital development, and infrastructure integration. South Africa advocates for increased investment in regional value chains, climate-resilient agriculture, and sustainable energy systems, while pushing for fairer access to capital for African economies through multilateral development banks and reformed global rating systems.
In its role as G20 president, South Africa is actively encouraging G20 members to deepen their engagement with Africa by focusing on co-investment models, risk-sharing mechanisms, and blended finance arrangements that crowd in private capital. Africa’s demographic dividend and natural resource base present long-term opportunities for strategic economic partnerships. The Compact with Africa (CwA) initiative, launched under Germany’s G20 presidency in 2017, is being reviewed and revitalised under South African leadership to ensure it better aligns with African-led priorities and supports AfCFTA implementation. In this regard, we aim to further boost the CwA when we host a G20 event in Addis Ababa during the first week of September to focus exclusively on boosting the CwA work and membership of African countries in the Compact.
Do you think there is the possibility of tackling Africa’s challenges under South Africa’s G20 presidency?
Yes, some of the answers above already address this question. South Africa’s presidency is expressly designed to address structural challenges faced by African countries and other developing nations. These include limited access to affordable long-term finance, vulnerability to climate and disaster shocks, constrained industrial development, and exclusion from global technology governance. Through both the Sherpa and Finance Tracks, South Africa is placing these issues at the centre of G20 deliberations and calling for stronger coordination with the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and regional institutions.
Specifically, the South African presidency is pushing for tangible G20 outcomes in areas such as debt relief for low-income countries, increased concessional climate finance, and support for developing countries in leveraging critical minerals for sustainable growth. The inclusion of digital public infrastructure and AI governance in the G20 agenda is another innovation, allowing for African perspectives on ethical technology development to be reflected. These efforts are being anchored through a G20-Africa Action Plan that sets clear deliverables and timelines.
What are Africa’s expectations from G20 members?
Africa’s expectations are based on principles of fairness, equity, and mutual interest. African countries expect G20 members to support reform of the international financial architecture, particularly around voting rights in Bretton Woods institutions, sovereign debt restructuring, and access to concessional finance. In addition, Africa seeks increased support for infrastructure development, digital transformation, industrialisation, and innovation ecosystems—key elements of both Agenda 2063 and national development plans.
There is also a strong expectation that G20 members will enhance investment in Africa’s energy transition, including natural gas as a transitional fuel, and provide resources for climate adaptation and resilience. The continent expects partnerships that create jobs, enable local value addition, and facilitate integration into global supply chains. Africa’s voice in setting international rules—whether in trade, AI, climate, or finance—must be amplified, and the African Union’s full membership in the G20 must now translate into institutional reforms that deliver concrete results.
Do you think the changing South Africa–United States diplomacy will influence these expectations?
South Africa’s foreign policy remains grounded in constitutional values, respect for sovereignty, multilateralism, and a commitment to global equity. While the current United States administration under President Donald Trump has adopted a more protectionist stance—including the imposition of 30% tariffs on selected South African exports—South Africa continues to engage constructively with all G20 partners, including the United States, through diplomatic, trade, and multilateral channels. The participation of the USA in our G20 calendar of events remain important to us as we believe that the entire G20 family should take ownership of the work and outcomes of our presidency, in addition, the USA will take over the G20 presidency from us and hence we need to have them onboard.
The South African government has taken note of the Trump administration’s critical rhetoric toward South Africa, particularly on domestic policies related to land reform, BRICS cooperation, and its posture on global geopolitical issues. However, these differences do not alter the continent’s structural development needs or the core agenda South Africa is advancing through the G20 and other formations such as BRICS and IBSA. Africa’s expectations—such as fairer trade rules, access to concessional finance, value addition in the supply chain processes, climate adaptation support, and inclusive technology governance—are long-standing and are shaped by collective African positions, not bilateral tensions. As G20 president, South Africa is committed to building consensus across ideological divides and ensuring that global economic governance delivers balanced outcomes, even amidst evolving bilateral dynamics. We believe that in this challenging geo-political climate, South Africa is the best country to lead the G20 group at this stage, our experience in shaping an inclusive democratic society in the early 1990’s is now serving us well.
By Modupe Gbadeyanka
A $1 million funding package has been secured by an Artificial Intelligence (AI) startup, Echovane, to expand its market research platform.
The fresh capital would be used by the company to build AI agents that execute market research end-to-end, used by Fortune-500 firms, including P&G, Haleon, and Kantar.
Echovane will utilise the funds, co-led by Titan Capital and Neon Fund, to make complex market research a done-for-you AI-native service.
The platform is built on the premise that AI should take on the machinery of research while researchers retain control over the judgment. The result should be faster execution without sacrificing rigour, traceability or trust.
Echovane was founded by former Amazon, Stripe, Gojek and Razorpay product leaders and graduates of the Indian Institute of Technology, Smriti Gupta, Vipul Nair and Himadri Roy.
They initially set out to build an AI moderator for consumer interviews. But the deeper they went, the clearer it became that the interview was only a fraction of the problem. Research teams were still spending weeks recruiting participants, coordinating fieldwork, analysing evidence and turning it into something the business could act on.
So, the founders expanded Echovane into the execution layer for the entire research process.
“We thought better AI interviews would unlock faster research. But that was only one step in the research operations, for one methodology of research.
“In reality, research is more complex, and can vary from interviews to unobtrusive observations and longitudinal studies. It has multi-level complexity including finding niche participants, getting the research completed on time with them and maintaining quality checks,” the chief executive of Echovane, Smriti Gupta, stated.
“This funding allows us to deepen the agent infrastructure behind Echovane, expand our multimodal capabilities, and strengthen the global participant network required to deliver increasingly complex studies with consistency,” the chief technical officer, Vipul Nair, noted.
Also commenting, the chief operating officer of Echovane, Himadri Roy, said, “Having done the research ourselves, we understand the operational pain researchers have to go through to conduct a good research that gives useful insights.”
“Echovane has made complex, multi-market studies feel simple. They find the right hard-to-reach participants, handle the nuances across markets and languages, and deliver actionable insights with remarkable speed and consistency,” the Consumer Science and Product Experience Lead for Haleon, Zee Alcasid, disclosed.
“Echovane turned a month of product research into two days. They reached exactly the right participants and let us test, learn and iterate continuously across multiple audiences, countries, product variants all within a single study that would be impossible to execute at speed and scale,” the chief product officer for Trustly, Adam D’arcy, stated.
A spokesperson for Titan Capital said, “We have backed Smriti, Vipul and Himadri because they have deeply understood why market research has stayed slow and expensive for decades.
“With Echovane, they are building an AI-native, end-to-end research platform focused on the quality of the final insight, encoding each client’s context into a system that gets sharper with every study.
“They are turning research from a recurring expense into compounding infrastructure — faster, cheaper and genuinely deeper. Their first-principles thinking and capital-efficient execution gave us confidence in Echovane’s long-term potential.”
By Kestér Kenn Klomegâh
Russia’s system of foreign students’ admission is currently experiencing a completely different shape, due to the rapidly shifting geopolitical reality. The emerging trends are closely connected with increasing the number of highly interested applicants rather than the quality of education. The geopolitical shift is pushing Russia to make education for young Africans an ultimate priority. The quota campaign has already begun as the figure compares favourably with previous benchmarks but, to some considerable extent, noticeable challenges are currently affecting enrollment from Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
Despite that, general interest in Russian education among foreign nationals is increasing; the quota campaign confirms this trend. Last year, for instance, there were about 144,000 registrations in Rossotrudnichestvo’s Education in Russian system. The number has exceeded 160,000 in 2026. What is important here is that Russia shows preparedness to get more students from developing countries, especially from Africa and uses it as a factor for influencing its foreign policy in the region.
Regarding educational initiatives, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in conjunction with relevant agencies and organisations are active in Africa. Noticeably, Russia is developing and expanding the existing, successfully operating cooperation in the sphere of education. In fact, priority is given to projects in the field of education and training of professional personnel for African countries. Currently, over 37,000 students from Africa are studying at Russian universities. Reports say a gradual increase in the number of scholarships for African citizens and the expansion of the range of professional training programs will provide a strong incentive for further promoting education at Russian universities.
This will continue to actively strengthen inter-university ties with African partners, including through specialised umbrella organisations such as the Russian-African Network University, the Consortium of Technical Universities “Nadra Africa” based at the Empress Catherine II St. Petersburg Mining University, the Russian-African Network Transport University, and the Consortium of Russian Universities Working in West Africa based at the NGO “Centre for Public Diplomacy.”
Reports further indicated that the Rossotrudnichestvo representative offices—the Russian Science and Culture Centres—operating in eight African countries, as well as the Open Education Centres operating under the auspices of the Russian Ministry of Education in 31 African countries, serve as a solid foundation for our humanitarian presence in Africa. They serve as conduits for the Russian language and culture on the continent. It is, however, hoped that their number would only increase in the subsequent years.
While addressing the staff and students at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, Foreign Affairs Minister Sergey Lavrov reiterated Russia’s readiness to cooperate actively in the sustainable economic development and to strengthen efforts at training the needed specialists and professionals for Africa. After the collapse of the Soviet system in 1991, there were problems sustaining relations with Africa. Then, after more than a decade, Russia started to return to Africa. This process has been ongoing for the past 15 years, according to the top Russian diplomat.
According to Lavrov, these past few years have been characterised by frequent interactions between Russian and African Foreign Ministers, plethora of MoUs were signed that set out the broad parameters of cooperation. Russia’s Education Ministry and the Foreign Affairs Ministry have raised the quotas for many African countries, the highest given to Angola, Ethiopia, Namibia and Mozambique, and South Africa.
According to a report posted on the MFA website in August, for instance, some 1,120 Angolans have enrolled, on Russian scholarships or grants, at various institutes and universities throughout the Russian Federation. Figures for other African countries are available on the official information portal of the ministry.
Besides state-sponsored students, Russia’s Education Ministry has also launched a large-scale educational campaign targeting the recruitment of private foreign students into its educational institutions across the Russian Federation. The program is to be implemented until 2025, which has a website (studyinrussia) translated into different languages, seeks to boost the popularity and improve its image abroad.
Undoubtedly, Russia aims at strengthening the next generation of pro-Russian elites who will help promote its interests, including long-term ones in their home countries. With this in mind, the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ultimately, hope to improve the efficiency of “soft power” in Africa, though not to the levels during the Soviet era.
Understandably, Russia is now targeting Africa’s fast-growing population as a huge potential market for knowledge transfer and export education. Rossiyskaya Gazeta, a widely circulated Russian daily newspaper, reported that Russia has been focusing on the young population in developing countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America, targeting the elite and middle class in these markets for the export of education, which has great potential.
The newspaper reported on the advantages of multiculturalism and cross-cultural interactive activities paving the way for integration in Russian society. As far back as 2023, Russia’s Federation Council and State Duma (upper and lower houses of parliament) passed a bill. That bill was finally signed into law, allowing foreign students the right to employment, a replica of the work and study model in Western and European countries.
Professor Viktor Sadovnichy, Rector of Moscow State University and Chairman of the Russian Rectors’ Association, an organisation that unites more than 700 heads of higher education institutions, argued that education and demography are interconnected; developing countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America have growing middle classes. “This favours the export of our education; it has great potential cooperating in the education sphere, it could serve as a huge market – training young professionals that are in demand on the labour market,” Sadovnichy said, addressing a plenary meeting of the Russian Rectors’ Association at Peter the Great St Petersburg State Polytechnic University.
Professor Natalia Vlasova, Deputy Rector at the Department of International Relations and Cooperation of the Ural State University of Economics in Yekaterinburg, explained that many African countries are developing rapidly, and the African elites and the growing middle-class have great potential for sponsoring their children’s education abroad. “In the times of the Soviet Union, African countries were strategic partners, and now we should reactivate these relations because in the near future they will have big economic and political power. This could, indeed, be a huge market and has the business potential,” she noted assertively.
An educational survey released in September 2024, divided into five major groups, said Russia has made significant efforts at improving teaching (the learning environment), research, citations (research influence), knowledge transfer, and international outlook (staff, students, research) in the educational field, according to the Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings.
By Kestér Kenn Klomegâh
One year after launching a continental initiative designed to make excellence in public governance the foundation of a new drive to transform Africa, LEAD, the Africa CEO Forum’s pan-African leadership programme, takes stock of its first cohort and announces the launch of its second class. Built around a community of senior public decision-makers committed to modernising the state and to the continent’s digital transformation, this new cohort gathers for three days, from 28 to 30 August 2026, on the campus of Mohammed VI Polytechnic University (UM6P) in Rabat, Morocco.
A second cohort that confirms the programme’s durability
For its second class, LEAD brings together 50 fellows, senior public decision-makers engaged in the design and implementation of the continent’s economic and social policies. Over three days, participants take part in collective and collaborative working sessions, peer exchanges and meetings with figures from the public, business and academic spheres, in order to compare their practices and build shared responses to the major challenges of governance.
Speakers include Mehdi Jomaa, former Head of Government of Tunisia, Donald Kaberuka, Managing Partner & Founder, SouthBridge Group, and former President of the African Development Bank, Serge Ekue, President of the West African Development Bank (BOAD), Sanjay Jain, co-creator of India Stack and Director of Digital Public Infrastructure, Gates Foundation, and Mauricio Cardenas, Professor of Professional Practice in Global Leadership, Columbia SIPA, and former Finance Minister of Colombia (2012-2018).
They share their reform experience, their public policy trade-offs and their view of continental priorities. Throughout the programme, the cohort benefits from the dedicated support of Mohammed VI Polytechnic University, Asafo & Co, BOAD, BCG and the African Development Bank, LEAD partners that have chosen to invest in the transformation of African public action.
LEAD, a pan-African community serving public action
Created by the AFRICA CEO FORUM, LEAD is a leadership programme whose ambition is to reposition Africa’s administrative elite as a driver of reform, of performance and of dialogue with all the continent’s stakeholders.
Designed for senior African public decision-makers, LEAD sets out to build a lasting community of public officials able to share their experience, compare their practices and build common solutions to the major economic, technological and institutional transformations under way in Africa. That community is structured around three pillars: modernizing the state, improving public services, and strengthening cooperation between governments, development institutions and private-sector players.
From fellows to alumni: a long-term initiative
Made up of 36 fellows drawn from a range of administrations and institutions and representing 24 countries across the continent, LEAD’s first cohort demonstrated the quality and the potential of this community from its very first year. In less than twelve months, six of its members have taken a significant step forward: two have been appointed ministers, two have moved into strategic positions at the highest level of the state and two have been promoted to chief executive roles. These moves, which account for 16.7% of the first class, show the role LEAD plays as an accelerator of impact within African administrations.
By bringing together a new cohort of fellows every year, each of them joining the LEAD alumni community, the initiative follows a long-term trajectory: in time, to unite several hundred African public decision-makers around a shared culture of transparency, performance and regional cooperation.
A first year devoted to public service and digital public infrastructure
Throughout the year, the fellows devoted their work to strengthening African public action, to make excellence in public governance a central lever of transformation. An awareness campaign, run as part of Africa Public Service Day, brought to light those who, within the continent’s administrations and institutions, are concretely transforming public policy and improving the services offered to citizens.
Members of the cohort also took part in a special round table held in Kigali during the ACF 2026, in order to carry their thinking to a wider community of public and private leaders. That forum reinforced LEAD’s role as a platform for dialogue between the administrative elite and the continent’s economic players. Digital public infrastructure (DPI) formed the main thread of this first year of work.
Discussions covered issues at the heart of the digital sovereignty of African states: digital identity, payments, secure data exchange, interoperability, governance and the protection of citizens. This work examined the conditions under which African states are developing, in some cases, and can develop, in others, shared, open infrastructure robust enough to improve the quality of public services while supporting local innovation and preserving the capacity of public authorities to set the rules of the game.
A white paper to move from consuming technology to creating value
This year of work concludes with the publication, in collaboration with BCG, LEAD’s Knowledge Partner, of a white paper on Africa’s place in the digital economy and in artificial intelligence. With the digital economy still accounting for around 5% of African GDP, against close to 15% worldwide, the paper calls on the continent to shift from a logic of technology consumption to one of value creation.
The white paper identifies three structuring priorities for African public actors:
- Building shared digital infrastructure that serves as the backbone of public services and private innovation.
- Pooling investment in order to reach critical mass and avoid the fragmentation of efforts across the continent.
- Favouring open and interoperable architectures, with trust and governance built in by design, so as to protect citizens while stimulating the entrepreneurial ecosystem.
The white paper is available here to all public decision-makers, technical partners and institutions concerned.
“LEAD’s first cohort confirms a simple conviction: Africa already has the women and men capable of profoundly transforming public action. Our responsibility, either with our partners, is to give them, at pan-African level, a space in which to compare experience, build common solutions and bring forward a new generation of public policy. With this second cohort, we want to accelerate the move from ambition to execution, in particular on digital public infrastructure and artificial intelligence, two decisive issues for sovereignty, for the effectiveness of the state and for value creation across the continent,” says Amir Ben Yahmed, President of the Africa CEO Forum.
