Forget G20, first fix SA's problems

South Africa will welcome the world's top leaders this weekend as the G20 summit convenes in Johannesburg.

- KYLE ZEEMAN

The agenda is ambitious: sustainable financing, economic inclusion, climate action, inequality, industrialisation, poverty, debt, food security, technological change and geopolitical instability.

As G20 president since November last year, South Africa promised to “accelerate practical solutions” toward the United Nation's 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. Yet progress is dismal.

The World Economic Forum reported in September that only 18% of these goals are on track, nearly half are moving too slowly and a fifth are regressing.

Leaders may congratulate themselves in the name of diplomacy, but the reality is failure.