As the only Knowledge Partner working across all priority areas of the DEWG, and the only Knowledge Partner from Africa, Research ICT Africa (RIA) was privileged to have a front row seat at the G20, working closely with the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies (DCDT), and other international knowledge partners including the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), CETIC, the Development Bank of South Africa, and the African Union (AU).
Together, we supported South Africa in extending the narrow G20 AI focus over the previous presidencies on privacy and security, to examine the risks and opportunities across the entire AI value chain, from labour exploitation in extractive mineral mining, to data labelling and content moderation. Equally, the South African agenda addressed the environmental considerations of energy and water-hungry data centers required to train AI models, as well as these models’ impact on the erosion of democracy through deepfakes and misinformation. Across all priority areas, data was a binding issue – from the need for digital public statistics to measure equitable digital inclusion, to the need for an integrated data governance framework for DPI, and finally, access to data for local language LLM development and innovation.
However, despite this progressive agenda, which powerfully addressed calls from the T20, L20 and M20 for global leadership in critical geopolitical issues – particularly the erosion of global governance of digital public goods and the deep implications of AI in the current geoeconomic weaponisation of trade and aid – this progressive agenda was ultimately not supported by key G20 Member States, resulting in a collapsed compromise for the final Chair’s Statement.
That the G20 again failed to reach consensus on these critical issues is gravely concerning, especially given AI’s rapid, largely unregulated development, driven by a handful of corporations in only two countries. The geopolitical struggle by big powers for dominance over key chokepoints highlights the pertinence of the South African G20 Presidency’s Task Force on AI, Data Governance, Innovation for Sustainability, which RIA worked very closely with alongside the DCDT, the AU and the Office of Digital and Emerging Technologies (ODET). It also highlights the need to build on the Global Digital Compact and AI for Humanity initiative and the AU’s Data and AI policies in order to sustain urgent messaging surrounding issues just AI and data governance outside of the G20.
The RIA Knowledge Partner Statement highlights the significance of this ongoing work in the context of calls from engagement groups for global leadership on these critical issues. Further, it records the progressive digital transformation agenda under South Africa’s Presidency, which built on the gains from the Brazilian (2024) and Indian Presidencies (2023), highlighting both progress and missed opportunities in this year’s G20 process.
See the invited statements on On AI and Data Governance and the Digital Economy, submitted in October 2025.
RIA’s year-long support to the SA G20 Presidency, led by Dr Alison Gillwald – with the beyond-duty commitment of Dr Guy Burger, Leslie Dwolatsky, Jamie Fuller and Drew Haller – would not have been possible without the support of the FCDO and the IDRC, who once again enabled RIA to contribute to this significant international policy window and the decades-long research investment that RIA was able to draw on.
