Elizabeth Sidiropoulos is the Chief Executive of the South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA), a position she has held since 2005. Her areas of expertise lie with South African foreign policy, Africa and external powers, global governance and South-South cooperation. She has served on the UN Under-Secretary-General’s High-Level Advisory Board on Economic and Social Affairs since 2020.  

Elizabeth has been researching G20 related issues for a number of years. She is the co-convenor, together with the Institute for Development and Sustainability, of the Think20 Africa Standing Group, established in 2017 during the German presidency of the G20. She has served as co-chair of various taskforces in the Think20 engagement group of the G20 over the years and in 2024 she was coordinator of the General Secretariat of the Think20 Brazil International Advisory Council. 

Her most recent co-edited volumes include Values, Interests and Power: South African Foreign Policy in Uncertain Times (2020), and The Palgrave Handbook of Development Cooperation for Achieving the 2030 Agenda (2021). Her other work includes the rise of new development cooperation providers and the institutionalisation of their assistance, which were explored in two edited volumes, Development cooperation and emerging powers: New Partners or Old Patterns (Zed Books, 2012) and Institutional Architecture and Development: Responses from Emerging Powers (Jacana, 2015).  

She is the Editor-in-Chief of the South African Journal of International Affairs, a policy-oriented, peer-reviewed and interdisciplinary forum on Africa’s and South Africa’s international relations.