It is part of the official T20 engagement process during the current Argentinean G20 presidency. On site, the Executive Secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), Vera Songwe, stated that, “The T20 Africa Standing Group is extremely important because around the G7 and G20 there’s a whole army of institutions that writes policy notes for the different governments but we don’t have a singular army of policy makers like ourselves saying this is Africa’s position,” she said.
Participants from more than 30 international think tanks attended the meeting and discussed key topical issues relevant to the cooperation between G20 and Africa, including global governance, job creation, the recently signed African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA), peace & governance, tax base erosion, domestic resource mobilization, education and global health.
For her part, Elizabeth Sidiropoulos, member of T20 Africa’s Governance Board, said:
“Africa’s voice is crucial in global discussions as most of the world’s decisions impact the continent one way or the other. The level of engagement between Africa and the G20 is insufficient and the meeting successfully explored this”.
The T20 Africa annual meeting worked on policy briefs and targeted policy recommendations to improve cooperation between G20 and Africa on global issues. Policy recommendations will presented to the Argentinean G20 presidency in May 2018.
The T20 Africa was launched in May 2017 during the T20 Summit in Berlin. It engages in cross-regional joint knowledge production and provides evidence-based policy advice on global sustainable development. It focuses on cooperation between Africa and G20 (countries). The network encompasses more than 30 leading think tanks from across Africa and G20 countries. The group works on a broad range of issues relevant to economic, social and political transformation in Africa and the world economy. Governance mechanisms for Africa-G20 cooperation are a key focus. The starting points for the group’s joint research and advisory work are the African Union’s Agenda 2063 and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development as well as the G20 work streams. T20 Africa is an outcome of the first T20 Africa Conference that took place in February 2017 in Johannesburg and was initiated by the German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) and the South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA). It draws on significant support from the Managing Global Governance (MGG) Network coordinated by DIE.
