As the South African Presidency steers the Group of Twenty (G20) towards the final phases of its global policy processes, Working Groups and Task Forces face a critical moment in their journey towards finalising the Ministerial Declaration that will be presented at the Global Summit in November 2025 in Cape Town. Throughout the last year, Research ICT Africa has been contributing to the G20 and T20 Digital Transformation tracks as both a knowledge partner and Task Force collaborator. Using the momentum of this African-hosted international forum, RIA has embraced the opportunity to spotlight the continental challenges that our research has identified as major barriers to digital inclusion, universal meaningful connectivity and the achievement of an equitable and just information society.
SA’s G20 Presidency Provides an Opportunity to Shift Tech Debates and Governance Approaches
As the first G20 hosted in Africa, South Africa’s Presidency presents a significant opportunity to introduce African perspectives into a global debate on a sector that has been notoriously shaped by Western influence and concentrated corporate and computing power. In response, Global South think tanks and research institutes are stepping forward to highlight power imbalances, surface key challenges and offer grounded, regional solutions.
As the Digital Economy Working Group aptly notes, SA’s G20 Presidency comes at a time of renewed international focus on digital transformation. Recent global forums, including the United Nations (UN) Summit of the Future and its Global Digital Compact (GDC), have reaffirmed the need for stronger digital cooperation and a shared commitment to digital inclusion, especially in the Global South, to realise the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Additionally, WSIS’s 25th Review this year provides ‘an opportunity to strengthen and broaden global efforts towards an inclusive digital economy and society.’ The SA G20 leadership helps to advance this call by increasing African representation, bolstered by the African Union’s G20 membership, in decision-making processes that have long overlooked or excluded the continent.
Research ICT Africa as a Knowledge Partner for the Digital Economy Working Group
The Digital Economy Working Group (DEWG) and the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies (DCDT) oversee the Digital Transformation priority. DEWG coordinates input from official Knowledge Partners, who are responsible for making policy recommendations and practical deliverables, including roadmaps, workshops, research papers, toolkits and guidelines, to support the equitable adoption of digital technologies.
Under the Digital Transformation Priority, Knowledge Partners provide input on:
- Connectivity for inclusive digital development;
- Digital public infrastructure and transformation;
- Digital innovation ecosystems: unleashing the potential of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs); and
- Equitable, inclusive, and just artificial intelligence (AI).
RIA, alongside partners including UNDP, African Development Bank, ITU, DIAL, the UN Tech Envoy, the World Bank, OECD and UNESCO, participated in programmatic meetings in April (Gqeberha, Eastern Cape) and June (Polokwane, Limpopo). At both meetings, RIA submitted numerous working briefs and hosted workshops on each of the priority areas.
RIA drew on its extensive network, spanning policy, government, academia and civil society, to host a series of workshops across the DWEG Group meetings. These multidisciplinary engagements contributed new insights, deepening existing conversations:
Highlights included:
- A session on Digitalising MSMEs, co-led with the International Finance Corporation, featuring input from Sreevas Srahasanamam (Glasgow University) and Andrew Partridge (former Project Lead for After Access)
- A discussion on Funding Digital Inclusion Statistics, with contributions from the ITU and CETIC.br, which used case studies from Brazil’s demand-side interventions and funding programmes to build recommendations for funding public data statistics in South Africa. These recommendations were grounded in the local context by Neil Roux (Statistics South Africa).
- A high-level Deepfakes workshop, with participation from TikTok’s Policy Department, representatives from Primedia, researchers from C2PA, UN and OECD, and high-profile officials such as Jao Brandt and SA’s Information Regulator, Pansy Tlakula, with support from Mukelani Dimba.
RIA’s contributions and engagements were underpinned by two decades of policy research in programmatic areas. Discussions surrounding MSMEs and Universal Meaningful Connectivity were informed by our After Access project, the only nationally representative demand-side surveys in Africa. Workshops on Deepfakes and GenAI drew on RIA’s Just AI research and our data governance work with D4D. In the DPI Priority area, RIA’s contributions to Brazil’s 2024 T20 Communiqué also proved useful in priming the space for a more integrated data governance framework, which is being carefully refined in collaboration with partners from ITU, UNDP, and DIAL.
DCDT Minister, Solly Malatsi, acknowledged Knowledge Partners’ work in his opening speech, specifically mentioning RIA’s work on DPI and connectivity for inclusive digital development. As one of South Africa’s leading digital policy think tanks, RIA’s inclusion in these forums reaffirms its position as a critical contributor within global governance debates.
What’s Next?
The first two DEWG meetings focused on presenting and discussing policy and capacity-building recommendations from Knowledge Partners, with input from G20 Member states and invited guests. As the discussions move forward, however, pressure points have emerged, particularly around regulating emerging advanced technologies, where geospatial tensions have made consensus more difficult.
As the final meetings shift to refining outcome documents, RIA’s priority is to embed language that supports the ‘equitable, inclusive and just’ regulation and adoption of emerging technologies. Our focus includes equitable access to data for researchers; increased funding for digital inclusion statistics; MSMEs digitalisation; and stronger regulation of Deepfakes, which we see as critical to closing the digital divide in Africa.
Supporting the T20 Ideas Bank
Beyond providing input as a Knowledge Partner to the DEWG, RIA is represented in the T20 Task Force on Digital Transformation by Dr Alison Gillwald, who serves as the Elected Co-Chair. In this role, she synthesises input from T20 Policy Briefs, facilitates global governance dialogues, and provides recommendations within the Digital Transformation sub-track.
As the ‘ideas bank’ of the G20, the T20 and its Task Forces bring together expert researchers and practitioners to inform policy through events such as the T20 Mid-term Conference and the Africa High-level Policy Dialogue, where RIA participated as both speaker and facilitator.
In 2025, the T20 South Africa Vision focuses on “facilitating a deeper policy engagement between the task forces, the Advisory Council and the official G20 track, thus optimising the participation of experts in the T20 from around the world.” RIA supported this process by submitting policy briefs and hosting an official T20 Side Event, which resulted in a formal statement of recommendations for consideration by the T20.
This work has culminated in a final Communiqué, which outlines the following three priorities for the G20 to take forward under the Digital Transformation pillar:
- “Drive efforts to fund the production of standard and new statistics and analysis necessary for evidence-based digital policy.
- Align with global governance efforts to support the development of enabling national and regional integrated data governance frameworks
- Extend earlier G20 endorsements of the role of Digital Public Infrastructure in development with commitments to ensuring a ‘people-first’ and whole-of-society approach to digital public infrastructure and emerging technologies.”
Embedding African Priorities into Global Policy
As South Africa moves through the final phases of its G20 Presidency, the focus shifts from dialogue to delivery. With the handover to the United States in 2026 marking the end of the Troika leadership shaped by India, Brazil, and South Africa, the opportunity to embed Global South priorities, such as redressing economic inclusion and equitable access in global policy, remains both urgent and time-bound. In such a climate, think tanks and Knowledge Partners like RIA have a vital role to play. By grounding global commitments in local realities and building a common agenda shaped by the evidence base of knowledge networks across regions, we can help shape a digital future defined not by division, but by cooperation, justice and shared progress.
