Lula closes G20 with Mandela’s phrase and hands presidency to South Africa

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva concluded this Tuesday (19), in Rio de Janeiro, the work of the G20 Summit, a group that brings together the largest economies on the planet, with an inspiring phrase from former South African president Nelson Mandela : “It is easy to demolish and destroy; Heroes are those who build.”

“We will continue building a fair world and a sustainable planet. Thank you very much”, added Lula when handing over the rotating presidency of the G20 to his colleague Cyril Ramaphosa, from South Africa, who will host the next event in 2025.

Lula wished Ramaphosa every success in leading the G20. “South Africa will be able to count on Brazil to exercise a presidency that goes beyond what we were able to achieve.”

The Brazilian president took stock of the results of work that involved, in 2024, more than 140 meetings in 15 Brazilian cities.

He considered the event the penultimate era in a four-year sequence in which G20 leadership fell to developing countries: Indonesia, India, Brazil and, now, South Africa.

Lula assessed that these countries brought a more human perspective to the group, which enabled the search for measures with a concrete impact on people’s lives.

“We launched a Global Alliance against Hunger and Poverty and started an unprecedented debate about taxing the super-rich. We put climate change on the agenda of the Ministries of Finance and Central Banks and approved the first multilateral document on the bioeconomy”, he highlighted.

Global governance

Another highlight was the call for reforms that make global governance more effective and representative and dialogue with society through the G20 Social.

“We launched a roadmap to make multilateral development banks better, bigger and more effective and gave African countries a voice in the debt discussion. We set up the Working Group on Women’s Empowerment and proposed an eighteenth Sustainable Development Goal to promote racial equality,” he said.

In the field of sustainability, Lula said that “key principles on trade and sustainable development were defined and a commitment to tripling global renewable energy capacity by 2030” was adopted.

“We created a Coalition for Local and Regional Production of Vaccines and Medicines and decided to expand financing for water and sanitation infrastructure. We host World Health Organization Investment Round events, as we believe that more resources are needed for a collective response to new and persistent health challenges,” he said.

Artificial intelligence

Lula also highlighted the approval of the “Strategy to Promote Cooperation in Open Innovation” against asymmetries in scientific and technological production. Thus, there was a decision to establish a task force on the governance of artificial intelligence at the G20.

The president also highlighted the final declaration of the event, which once again reached consensus among countries.

“We have returned to adopting consensus statements in almost all working groups. We leave the lesson that the greater the interaction between the Sherpa and finance paths, the greater and more significant the results of our work will be.