JOINT PRESS RELEASE
Guardians’ Circle of the Accra Reset & The South African Presidency of the G20
Following the 2025 G20 Leaders’ Summit – Johannesburg
JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA
The Guardians’ Circle of the Accra Reset, on behalf of the inaugural Presidential Council of the Club of Accra, and the South African Presidency of the G20 today issued a joint statement celebrating the strategic partnership cultivated during the 2025 G20 Leaders’ Summit, and reaffirmed their shared commitment to advancing the principles of enhanced sovereignty, structural transformation, and equitable development for the Global South.
The Guardians are distinguished former Heads of State, Governments and International Organizations who serve as public champions and moral guardians of the Accra Reset.
The partnership symbolises a powerful convergence between the Accra Reset Agenda and South Africa’s leadership of the G20, using the global platform to elevate a new vision of development cooperation rooted in national ownership, systemic reform, and whole-of-society mobilisation of capital.
The Guardians’ Circle commended the South African Presidency of the G20 for its outstanding stewardship of the G20 process, which placed at its centre the priorities of Africa and other emerging regions. They were especially minded to celebrate the recalibration of the global financial architecture, the strengthening of health sovereignty, the deepening of digital public infrastructure, the rethink of strategic minerals strategy, and the reorientation of multilateralism toward inclusive, transformation-driven outcomes.
This year’s G20 outcomes strongly reinforce the ambitions of the Accra Reset, including:
- renewed global consensus on strengthening national policy space and sovereign decision-making;
- endorsement of innovative approaches to blended finance and development capital mobilisation;
- a call to advance an equitable global debt and capital regime—aligned with G20 commitments—by lowering financing costs, enabling responsible debt sustainability, and expanding fiscal space to support transformative investment by developing countries without undermining sovereignty.
- emphasis on resilient supply chains and local manufacturing capacity in strategic sectors;
- a new lens for envisaging critical minerals as enablers of geostrategic value chain integrations with Global South hubs;
- prioritisation of digital public infrastructure as an engine for social and economic inclusion; and
- a forward-looking commitment to reshaping multilateral institutions to reflect contemporary global realities.
The Guardians also welcomed the leadership and engagement of the inaugural Presidential Council of the Accra Reset.
In the margins of the Summit, Guardians of the Accra Reset, including H.E. President Olusegun Obasanjo, H.E. President Joyce Banda, and H.E. President Ameenah Gurib-Fakim, also held high-level bilateral consultations with G20 Heads of State and senior representatives, reinforcing momentum around the adoption of the Accra Reset framework and forging new strategic alliances aligned to its mission.
Crucially, the discussions and outcomes of the Johannesburg Summit have laid the groundwork for integrating the Accra Reset Agenda into the Africa Engagement Framework of the G20, consolidating collective efforts toward the emergence of a new development order.
Both parties reaffirmed that the Accra Reset’s mission to reposition development as a country-led, regionally coordinated, and globally coherent enterprise aligns precisely with the renewed vision of multilateralism championed by South Africa’s G20 Presidency. This vision emphasises structural transformation, inclusive growth, fiscal and policy sovereignty, and the empowerment of emerging economies to exert greater agency in shaping global development norms.
This moment marks much more than symbolic alignment. It signals the crystallisation of a coalition of leaders, institutions, and advocates dedicated to reimagining development through sovereignty, solidarity, and systemic renewal.
Issued jointly by: The Guardians’ Circle of the Accra Reset The South African Presidency of the G20
Johannesburg, South Africa November 2025