WeeklySA_AdminINEQUALITY: Africa’s first G20 presidency could mark a turning point for the continent—or simply another performance of green-washed extraction led by mining elites, says the writer of the article…
By Charlize Tomaselli
When the G20 meets in Johannesburg this weekend, President Cyril Ramaphosa will step into the spotlight as host. It is a historic first for Africa. With an agenda heavy on critical minerals, energy transition, and financing, this moment could, in theory, reshape the global economy to better serve Africa’s interests. Yet Ramaphosa’s presidency risks becoming another performance of elite driven extractivism dressed up as a “just transition.”
The so called green transition is not unfolding apart from older forms of extraction; it is their continuation under a different name. Across the continent, the minerals fuelling the clean energy revolution are being sourced through exploitative models that have long dispossessed African communities. It is a transition green for some, but deadly for others.
Johannesburg itself embodies this contradiction. Once Egoli, the “City of Gold,” its glittering origins have given way to cracked roads, failing water systems, and widening inequality. The same city that powered colonial industry now struggles to keep its lights on. Against this backdrop, leaders will unveil ambitions for lithium, cobalt, and graphite to power “green growth”—in a city literally collapsing under the weight of its own extractive history.
Scramble for Africa
Johannesburg’s story is not an exception but a warning of what continues to unfold across Africa’s mining regions. The green energy race is fuelling a 21st century scramble for critical minerals, justified by climate imperatives rather than colonial missions.
China expands its reach through the Belt and Road Initiative, while the United States and European Union seek to curb China’s influence by securing supply chains through projects like the Lobito Corridor.
Amid this competition, countries such as South Africa, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, and the DRC are cast as “strategic partners” yet treated merely as sites of extraction.
Ramaphosa’s South Africa, straddling BRICS and the G20, markets its “strategic non alignment” as sovereignty. In practice, it risks becoming broker to competing imperial centres—facilitating access for all sides while communities at home bear the costs.
Ramaphosa and mining capital
Ramaphosa has long presented himself as a champion of investment and growth, but those gains have flowed upward, deepening inequality. Before politics, he made his fortune through Black Economic Empowerment deals in mining, becoming one of South Africa’s richest men. His family continues to benefit. His brother in law, Patrice Motsepe, is a mining magnate with sprawling interests in platinum, manganese, and green energy ventures. Ramaphosa himself has sat on the boards of corporations now lining up to expand into Africa’s lithium, cobalt, and graphite sectors.
From Marikana – where striking miners were massacred while he sat on Lonmin’s board – to today’s “just transition” through privatisation of state entities, his record reflects alignment with capital rather than workers or communities.
Quarry of the world
This overlap between political leadership and corporate mining interests is not incidental; it is the architecture of South Africa’s export oriented, elite driven economy. Now, as G20 president, Ramaphosa arrives at a moment when critical minerals are the crown jewel of the summit agenda. Beneath the language of transition lies a familiar logic: Africa as quarry for the world’s future industries, with mining regions turned into sacrifice zones where communities face dispossession, disrupted livelihoods, environmental degradation, and cultural loss.
In Zimbabwe’s Buhera District, families face displacement for lithium projects destined for European electric vehicles. Farms, homes, and even graves have been dug up. In Ulanga, Tanzania, graphite mining threatens food security as fertile farmland is swallowed by pits. For G20 leaders, graphite is “strategic”; for farmers, it is survival. In the DRC’s Ruashi, cobalt extraction poisons water and sickens children, even as cobalt is celebrated in G20 communiqués as vital for “clean” batteries.
Inequalities are stark: mining companies reap enormous profits and consume vast energy, while local communities remain impoverished and without electricity. These are not isolated tragedies but the ground level expression of policies now being formalised in G20 working groups—policies that frame Africa’s mineral wealth as a global resource to be secured and monetised.
Next Phase of Extraction
Through financing arms like the World Bank’s IFC, the African Development Bank, and the new G20 Task Force on critical minerals, the summit’s agenda is shaping the next phase of extractive expansion. Ramaphosa has stated: “As minerals extraction accelerates to match the needs of the energy transition, the countries and local communities endowed with these resources must be the ones to benefit the most.” Yet those most affected are excluded from the conversation. Instead, governments, corporations, and financiers dominate, prioritising global markets over local survival.
The Mirage of a ‘Just Transition’
Ramaphosa could, in theory, use South Africa’s presidency to break this cycle. He could push for value addition within Africa, not just raw exports; for technology transfers to build processing industries; for financing models that prioritise community consent and ecological protection. He could demand that “just transition” mean reparations for destruction, fair taxation of transnational corporations, and space for communities to decide development terms.
But this seems unlikely. Ramaphosa’s alignment with mining capital is not merely personal or financial; it is ideological. He subscribes to the belief that Africa’s route to development runs through extraction—that resource led growth is the continent’s comparative advantage. Many African leaders share this worldview, seeing mineral exports as the fastest route to revenue and legitimacy under creditor pressure. The die feels cast for Africa’s first G20 presidency to become another performance where leaders proclaim sovereignty while signing deals that deepen dependency, Ramaphosa styling himself as champion while elites carve up the spoils.
Communities resist
The G20 summit is an opportunity only if Africa refuses to be cast once more as quarry for the world’s green ambitions. Unless Ramaphosa, so deeply tied to mining capital, breaks with extractivism, his presidency will not mark the new chapter of genuinely championing communities resisting displacement and ecological devastation. If he fails to move the G20 beyond rhetoric, the summit will reinforce the very economic model that enriched him and his family. Africans must insist that this transition belongs to them and demand recognition. Communities across the continent are already showing the way.
From Buhera to Ulanga to Ruashi, they articulate visions of justice rooted in land rights, democratic participation, self determination, and ecological care. Their struggles remind us that a truly just transition cannot be brokered by elites in closed boardrooms or G20 task forces. It must begin with those whose futures are most directly at stake. If not, the G20 will not mark a turning point for Africa but a repetition – a ceremony of elite enrichment dressed in the language of justice.
And so, the G20, like Johannesburg – the city of gold turned city of decay – must move beyond extraction and global capitalism, towards a future where what glitters gives life, not takes it. – Africa is a Country
Comment
No to recolonisation
We do not want to sound like spoilsports We also do not want to be considered negative. We consider our sentiments to be close to the truly Pan Africanist voice of our people.
It is our Pan Africanist persuasion compelling us to tell the harsh truth about the G20 conference taking place in Johannesburg this weekend.
Looked under the cold stare of logic and history, this gathering trumpeted with so much pomp and hype brings no comfort to our people. A two-day summit held from November 22 – 24 and preceded by mini-summits for about a week cannot achieve much concerning global and financial problems.
The G20 may be viewed as an important global body whose manifest role is to address economic challenges in the developed and developing nations. But, we do not believe that it has lived up to this noble goal since its inception.
This animal made up of 19 developed and developing nations as well as members of the European Union and the African Union has not achieved much in our view.
The levels of inequality between the developed and developing countries is widening. Poverty in developing countries is deepening. Our country which is endowed with so many mineral resources has been declared the most unequal society in the world.
Such is the irrelevance of the G20 among our people that until a few days ago many were unaware of its existence or that Ramaphosa was its head for the past 12 months.
Ordinary South Africans would not be unreasonable in asking Ramaphosa how his presidency of this august organisation has helped them.
Millions of our people are unemployed. Poverty is devastating our communities. In the midst of this dire poverty we host former colonial masters like Britain and France. Countries responsible for Africa’s underdevelopment. Their business moguls continue to exploit our resources.
France continues to wreak havoc with the economies of West Africa. Western powers continue to plot the downfall of governments of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger. This is fact and not speculation.
We have lost count of the number of times France has attempted to assassinate Burkina Faso leader Ibrahim Traore.
Botswana and Namibia leaders are trying to chart a new path about the resources of their countries. Just like their West African counterparts, they are going to earn the ire of the West.
The US, Britain, France and Nato used force to topple Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi. His sin was to champion Africa’s economic independence.
Africa must not be seduced by the talk of equality and brotherhood mouthed by the West at this conference.
Africa must guard against being colonised again.
