G20: Lula Passes Baton to Ramaphosa, Quoting Mandela
“Powerful are those who build”
“We’ve had a dialog with the community through the Social G20, we walk away with the lesson that the more interaction, the better the results of our work.”
With these words, Lula da Silva, president of Brazil, closed the G20 summit in Rio by meeting Cyril Ramaphosa, president of South Africa, which will host the next summit in 2025. During the passing of the baton, Lula explained that “South Africa will be able to count on Brazil for a presidency beyond our capacity. A phrase from African leader Nelson Mandela comes to mind: ‘It is very easy to demolish and destroy, powerful are those who build.’”
In recent years, the leadership of the G20 has been anchored in developing countries, from Indonesia to India to Brazil, and now it will be South Africa’s turn. These countries are trying to assert a different viewpoint, one that is more multifaceted and addresses topics of interest to the vast majority of the world’s population.
“Starting from Bali, and on through New Delhi and finally Rio de Janeiro, we are trying to promote measures that have a concrete impact on people’s lives,” Lula explained, as reported by O’Globo. The Brazilian President then reviewed the efforts made at the Summit, namely the call for reforms to make global governance more effective and representative, as well as the roadmap to make multilateral development banks better, bigger, and more efficient. The Working Group on the Empowerment of Women then proposed an eighteenth Sustainable Development Goal to promote racial equality. Key principles of trade and sustainable development were then defined, with a commitment to triple global renewable energy capacity by 2030. Finally, strategies to promote cooperation in open innovation against asymmetries in science and technology production were endorsed, and it was agreed to establish a task force on AI governance in the G20.
