RICHARD CALLAND | No more empty words, please – the B20 process must result in details and action

South Africa’s G20 presidency has now entered what the Manchester United manager, Sir Alex Ferguson, used to call the “squeaky bum” part of the season. A mountain of work, from myriad ministerial and other working groups and task forces, is now funnelling into the final phase of a process that will culminate with the summit in Johannesburg on November 22-23.

As the sherpa process grinds towards the date, the temptation is to file the papers away, tick the box and prepare for the diplomatic choreography of leaders’ handshakes and staged photographs.

But that would be a fatal mistake.

For South Africa, chairing the G20 is an opportunity to set the tone for the global economic agenda; but it is also a reckoning because global governance is at an inflection point. The risks of watered-down communiqués and empty platitudes are very real.

And yet the urgency is greater than ever: climate instability, fractured supply chains, rising protectionism and geopolitical and geo-economic realignment are reshaping the context for sustainable development.

The B20, as the business voice in this elaborate process, has put forward a set of recommendations that, on paper, acknowledge the scale of the challenge. The task forces under the B20, spanning everything from energy and digital technology to finance and agriculture, cover the relevant ground, and they have yielded a coherent set of recommendations.

But the real test is whether they are specific, credible, and above all, actionable enough. It is time to get real, and to get granular

But the real test is whether they are specific, credible, and above all, actionable enough. It is time to get real, and to get granular.

For too long, G20 and B20 processes have indulged in comfortable language: “mobilise finance”, “accelerate infrastructure”, “support innovation”. But unless these terms are pinned down into concrete, bankable mechanisms, they risk becoming placeholders for inaction. The climate crisis, and the development crisis it compounds, cannot afford placeholders.

Our analysis at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership of the three task forces we supported as a B20 network partner – energy mix & just transition, industrial transformation & innovation, and finance & infrastructure – shows a number of clear overlaps. Taken together, they point towards five cogent and clear priorities.

First, mobilising climate finance at scale. The gap is vast – between $2-trillion and $4-trillion (R35-trillion and R70-trillion) a year in developing countries by 2030. But the capital exists. The missing link is derisking mechanisms and blended finance. That means scaling up project preparation facilities, expanding guarantee instruments, and creating transparent, investable pipelines. These are technical, concrete measures – not lofty statements – and they must be central to the B20 agenda.

Second, building strategic infrastructure corridors. This is about designing cross-border grids for renewable integration, industrial corridors for processing minerals and digital “single window” permitting systems to unclog regulatory bottlenecks. Infrastructure is the platform upon which all else depends – but only if it is built with foresight, resilience and local participation.

Third, breaking Africa’s value trap. At present, 80% of Africa’s minerals are exported raw. If the transition is to be just, industrial clusters and special economic zones must co-locate renewables, beneficiation and logistics. The B20 must call explicitly for policies and partnerships that support local value addition. Without this, Africa will remain trapped at the bottom of global supply chains.

Fourth, skills and workforce ecosystems. New industries require new skills — green hydrogen technicians, battery engineers, ESG auditors and more. To talk vaguely of “capacity building” is not enough. We must measure, monitor and deliver pipelines of real jobs.

Fifth, governance, trust and community buy-in. Without predictable rules and community participation, projects stall. A key set of recommendations concerns country platforms, which can align government, donors and investors to offer one mechanism to reduce duplication and integrate country climate commitments with development imperatives.

Granularity requires courage. It means confronting vested interests that prefer ambiguity because ambiguity allows delay. It means business leaders taking responsibility not just for shareholder returns, but for the societies and ecosystems upon which those returns depend. It means governments admitting where fragmentation, corruption or weak institutions are blocking or undermining progress.

As economist Prof Carlos Lopes has argued, Africa has been defensive for too long. This is the moment to exercise agency and escape the legacy economy. The B20’s recommendations, if made actionable, can support this. But it will require the continent’s leaders, political and corporate, to insist that the global agenda works for Africa.

This is the role that corporate leadership can play: to support the recommendations and transpose them into locally contextualised action. This is the kind of agency that Lopes is speaking of: never mind the summit, corporate leaders can commit to support and act on the recommendations regardless of whether they make it through the eye of the G20 needle.

Thus, the B20 is a bridge between policy and practice. The risk now is that South Africa presides over a summit of promises without pathways. The primary task is to insist on the granular detail that will make finance flow, infrastructure rise, industries diversify, skills multiply and communities thrive.

Calland is director of CISL Africa and adjunct visiting professor at the Wits School of Governance