No – at least not as the premier global economic institution it once was.

As a casualty of the shifting global order, the G20 has lost much of its former influence. Originally established to prevent catastrophic financial crises, it long served as the leading forum where major economies coordinated policy and cooperated to avert global shocks.

Over time, however, its agenda broadened, its membership expanded – including most recently the African Union – and it assumed responsibility for an ever-wider array of issues.

On top of this, the shifting global context has eroded its status and effectiveness.

The first challenge lies in the transition from unipolarity – the idea that there’s only one major power in the world (the US) – to a fragmented geo-economic order. Increasingly, competition between major global powers rather than multilateralism is shaping global politics. Securing consensus has proved difficult. Major powers, such as China and Russia, are challenging American dominance, which the US is determined to preserve.

In this context, the G20 has been paralysed by the deepening divide between “the west and the rest”. This is particularly the case between the US and major global south economies. South Africa and India, for instance, have used their G20 presidencies to highlight socio-economic inequalities and solidarity. These are themes that Washington has derided as “anti-American”. The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has equated them to the politically divisive diversity, equity and inclusion agenda.

The prospect of US leadership of the G20 after South Africa further underscores this legitimacy crisis. The terms on which the US will take over the presidency after South Africa remains uncertain. This has raised doubts about continuity and shared purpose as advanced by the G20. Moreover, the US has indicated that it will revamp the G20 “back to basics” when it assumes presidency of the group.

Second, geo-economics has made cooperation within the G20 more difficult. This is the process of national security concerns restricting trade in critical technological sectors, coupled with the growing reliance on economic sanctions. The global north and south remain divided over the legitimacy of this strategy, with the global south contesting its appropriateness.

While the north has leaned on sanctions as a tool of geopolitical power, the south contests the fairness of global economic arrangements.

One outcome of these differences is that the G20 has shifted from cooperation to coordination. It has become more capable of addressing technical, low-salience issues through its working groups. But it has become increasingly less able to resolve contentious political questions such as climate change or inequality.

Meanwhile, competing blocs such as Brics and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation are asserting themselves more forcefully.

In this landscape, the G20 is increasingly peripheral.

Third, the value of membership itself is diminishing. The inclusion of the African Union is symbolically important. But with only one seat at the table and significant internal diversity, Africa’s ability to shape the G20 agenda remains limited. Membership offers some scope for policy coordination, but few real gains in setting the global agenda.

The EU wields considerable geopolitical influence through its supranational integration and significant share of the global economy. But the AU operates on a looser intergovernmental basis. This requires it to balance the diverse interests of more than 50 states despite its comparatively limited economic weight.

Many African states are hedging by joining alternative forums such as Brics, where they see more tangible benefits. These include the prospect of development banks, alternative currencies and institutions built specifically for the global south.

For these reasons, the G20 is no longer the pre-eminent institution for governing the global economy or managing systemic risks. It is trapped by geopolitical rivalry, paralysed by competing visions of global order, and overshadowed by alternative institutions.

Yet it retains some residual value. It can still facilitate technical policy coordination where political stakes are lower. The adoption of the Common Framework for Debt Restructuring in 2023 is a promising example, albeit beset with implementation challenges.

This limited usefulness should not be overlooked. However, its days as the world’s premier forum for global economic governance seem to be behind it.

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View Kennedy's profile

No. But this is not through any fault of those who seriously believe in the potential of the G20 – including its 2025 host, South Africa.

The G20 is in danger of being seriously undermined. At a time when global institutions are fragmenting and multilateralism is under threat, the dismissive posture of one of the original pillars of the forum – the US – is cause for concern.

It sends a message that the forum’s trajectory of an expansive agenda involving multiple segments of society – business, think tanks, women, youth – could be curtailed when the US assumes the presidency next year after South Africa.

This could be a temporary setback. But it’s often difficult to reverse a train set in motion by a state as dominant as the US, as the experience of President Donald Trump’s coming to power has shown. Hung Tran, a former senior official of the International Monetary Fund, has even asked if the G20 will, in effect, become the G19.

The political rationale of a club of the world’s economically dominant states influencing the terms of economic cooperation for all other states has inherent contradictions. As Danny Bradlow and Robert Wade have pointed out, the G20 is an elite, self-selected group, representing a minority of the member states of the United Nations.

However, it doesn’t have to remain shackled by these limitations. The earlier years of the G20’s existence saw remarkable alignment between its leaders. The group could therefore make an impact in other forums where consensus positions about the risks, challenges and opportunities facing the global financial order are being developed. These include the United Nations, the World Trade Organisation and the International Monetary Fund.

The G20 relies for its effectiveness on consensus between states. In an increasingly fragile world order, riven by geopolitical competition, we have to be realistic about the prospects for implementing a common agenda. Given the tensions and conflicts in the world – from Europe to Africa and the Middle East, including an unfolding genocide in Gaza – it would be foolish to think that the 2025 G20 Leaders’ Summit in November 2025 will be an easy one.

And yet summit politics plays an important role in promoting dialogue. It is forums like the G20 that have won support for:

• placing development firmly on the agenda of all the participating states

• achieving alignment around climate goals

• agreeing on strategies around illicit financial flows.

South Africa’s 2025 G20 presidency got off to a tepid start. The government wants to use this year’s process to tackle the growing debt crisis, find ways for developing nations to get less costly funding, and explore realistic options for a green transition, among other priorities.

The mid-term meeting of G20 finance ministers and central bankers yielded a positive result in that they were able to agree on a joint statement committing the parties to strengthening multilateral institutions and addressing debt vulnerabilities faced by low income countries.

This can be seen as a victory for South Africa, which has sharply raised African countries’ debt sustainability as a key issue to be addressed.

But the achievements of the G20 could be undone if the multilateral institutions where the consensus decisions need to be carried through and implemented are hobbled by geopolitical rivalry. These institutions include the United Nations, the World Trade Organisation and the International Monetary Fund.

South Africa has faced one humiliation after the other this year from the US. First its ambassador to Washington was summarily declared persona non grata. Then President Cyril Ramaphosa was treated to an audience with an ill-informed Donald Trump at the White House. And there have been indications that the country will face sanctions for its foreign policy posture, which is to insist that the world order is multipolar, not unipolar, as well as for domestic policy choices.

This is symptomatic of the kind of politics lurking in the background of the G20.

South Africa is nevertheless likely to pull off a G20 summit that allows for consensus to be reached on the important issues facing the globe. These include the need for change in the formal multilateral institutions that can make the lasting differences required for a more inclusive and equitable world order. South Africa should use its G20 presidency to build alliances for shaping how these changes can come about.

But what remains unclear is what the 2026 iteration of the G20 – with the US chairing – will look like.

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View Sandy's profile

Yes, despite its limitations.

The G20 was created in 1999 in the wake of the Asian financial crisis. It was an acknowledgement by the members of the G7 that they could no longer manage the governance of the global economy on their own. The members of the G7 are Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States of America.

They needed to share this responsibility with a more globally representative group, so they invited a larger group of countries to join them in forming the G20. Even though the group represents about 67% of the global population and about 85% of the global economy, it is a self-selected group.

Its exclusive nature is a source of both strength and weakness.

Its strength is that it facilitates many meetings each year of technical level officials, ministers and heads of state/government. These meetings offer participants the opportunity to discuss issues of mutual interest, get to know each other and gain some insight into each of their perspectives on these issues. This helps promote cooperation in a crisis and keeps channels of communication among officials open even as the global situation continues to deteriorate.

The G20’s weakness arises from two sources. The first is the fact that its members are self-selected. This means that its legitimacy is always open to question.

Non-invited state and non-state actors question the authority of the G20 to make decisions that can directly affect them without giving them the opportunity to be part of the decision making process. It also leads to suspicion that the G20 in reality is merely a new forum in which the agenda and concerns of the richest and most powerful states predominate.

They can cite, for example, that following the global financial crisis in 2008 the G20 cooperated to mitigate the impact of the crisis but failed to make the deeper reforms that would have made the governance of the global economy more inclusive and sustainable and its governance more democratic.

The second source of weakness is that over time, the range of issues that the G20 discusses has expanded and the number of meetings it holds each year has grown. This has made the G20 process more burdensome and expensive. It also makes it harder for the group to reach substantial agreement and increases the risk that the outcomes of its meetings will be verbose and superficial rather than useful.

Fortunately, the G20 can take measures to improve its efficacy. First, it should develop regional groupings, co-chaired by a G20 and a non-G20 state from the region, through which it can communicate with those countries and stakeholders that do not participate in the G20.

Second, it needs to address the “mission creep” in the G20 process. This means that it should streamline its agenda so that it focuses on the issues of most interest to the whole global community.

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View Danny's profile

Yes – but with important caveats.

The G20 remains one of the few multilateral arenas that brings together western powers (the G7), eastern powers (China and Russia), major emerging economies (such as India, Brazil and Mexico), and key actors from the global south (such as South Africa).

When it was created in the late 1990s, the United States was the undisputed global power, and neoliberalism – marked by financial and trade liberalisation – set the terms of global integration. At that moment, US hegemony faced little ideological contestation, even though the negative consequences of globalisation were already evident in recurring financial crises. The G20 was designed to contain and manage these.

From the outset, the G20’s role was never transformative but managerial: to stabilise and better administer global capitalism.

The 2008 financial crisis, originating in the US itself, was a turning point. China was rising as a new pole of power, the Brics grouping emerged shortly afterwards, and the ideological consensus around neoliberalism began to erode.

In Latin America, the “pink tide” reshaped politics. Privatisation processes were partially halted, some assets were renationalised, such as the gas sector in Bolivia and the oil company YPF in Argentina. Governments reinvested heavily in infrastructure and social programmes. Paradoxically, these programmes were financed through extractive activities (mining and oil), which deepened social conflicts and intensified environmental impacts.

In today’s context, it is unlikely that the G20 would have been created in the same form, as geopolitical tensions dominate current international debates.

Since its creation, the G20 has gradually lost its initial focus on reforming the international financial architecture. It has expanded into an ever-growing list of issues. Despite being very important issues, many are nearly impossible to resolve by consensus. These include climate finance, the resolution of external debt, and tax reform aimed at taxing the super-rich.

The lack of consensus is apparent both within the G20 and in broader multilateral forums. These deadlocks highlight the difficulty of building agreements around structural matters that directly affect the financial sustainability of states and distributive justice in the international system.

Yet the G20 still matters. It provides a space for debate and coordination. And it reflects the power struggles and shifting balances of the international order.

As a forum of power politics, however, the G20 depends heavily on the will of its central members to move its agenda forward. This has become increasingly difficult in a world where the US, especially under President Donald Trump, has reverted to nationalist and unilateralist policies.

At a time of resurgent nationalism, the far right’s advance (particularly in Europe), and growing trade unilateralism, maintaining multilateral spaces like the G20 is crucial. For such forums to remain relevant, though, they must be reshaped to reflect the demands and ambitions of broader societies rather than merely reproducing the management of global capitalism. These demands and ambitions include improving labour conditions, environmental protections and social rights.

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View Ana's profile