The G20 Summit held this month in Johannesburg marked a transformative moment in the evolution of global governance. It was the first time the summit convened on African soil and the first occasion on which the African Union joined as a full member, signaling a long-overdue recognition of Africa’s central role in shaping the global economic future. Yet this moment of historic inclusion was overshadowed by the equally unprecedented absence of a founding member-the United States-whose decision to boycott the summit on flimsy pretexts introduced a jarring note of discord. Washington’s attempt to block the host country from issuing a final declaration only further exposed the geopolitical tensions quietly reshaping the world’s most powerful economic forum.

South Africa, however, refused to acquiesce. As the G20’s rotating president, it chose to move forward with a final declaration in defiance of US pressure, underscoring a growing shift in global power away from unilateral dominance and toward multipolar dialogue. Pretoria’s boldness set the tone for a summit determined to broaden the G20’s agenda to include the concerns of Africa and the wider developing world-regions that have long suffered from structural economic disadvantages but have rarely been given meaningful space in global decision-making.

Among these new priorities was the most ambitious and potentially consequential agenda item the G20 has taken up in years: the fight against global inequality. For the first time, G20 leaders collectively confronted the issue through the lens of the Extraordinary Committee of Independent Experts on Global Inequality, chaired by Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz. Drawing from extensive research and consultations with dozens of leading economists and social scientists, the committee’s report paints a sobering picture of an economic world order that is becoming dangerously imbalanced.

While global inequality declined modestly in the early 2000s, this improvement was driven almost entirely by rising incomes in China. When China is removed from the equation, the trend reverses: inequality remains entrenched and, in many cases, is getting worse. The gap between the richest and poorest countries, though narrower than it once........

© Blitz