Deputy Minister Alvin Botes: G20 Symposium

We meet on the 9th of June, a month that anchors us in three powerful moments of South African history.

Firstly, on this day, 09 June 2002, our country lost Peter Mokaba at the young age of 43. He was our fiery first president of the South African Youth Congress (SAYCO) and later of the ANC Youth League, whose rallying cry, “Roar Young Lions Roar,” became the clarion call and an article of faith for my generation (80s & 90s) when we were youth determined to finish the work of liberation.

Secondly, in exactly one week our nation will commemorate the 16 June 1976 uprising, when thousands of school-children faced down apartheid’s bullets and forced the world to witness their demand for dignity.

It is trite that 16th of June 1976 was a tipping point in the struggle for the liberation of South Africa and acted as catalyst for re igniting the spirit, bravery, boldness and boundless energy of the youth as well as the next generation of youth. Youth Day therefore reminds us that young South Africans have never been spectators of history; they have been its authors.

Thirdly in approximately 3 weeks’ time on 26 June we will commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Freedom Charter probably the most important document which has guided our revolutionary ethos values and principles both before 1994 and since 1994 until now.

Peter Mokaba himself was a child of 1976 where he cut his teeth as high school student activist before going on to lead my generation and his as a youth leader and ANC underground leader in the 1980s and 1990’s guided by the principles of the Freedom Charter. Thus, the generation of Mokaba lived the words of the Pan Africanist revolutionary Frans Fanon when he said ‘’ Each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfil it, or betray it.’’

Today’s event is timed to coincide with the three events —places that tradition of revolutionary activism, cadreship and the values and principles espoused in the Freedom Charter at the heart of South Africa’s G20 presidency.

From 01 December 2024 until the Johannesburg Leaders’ Summit in November 2025, South Africa chairs the world’s most influential economic forum, that is the G20, under the banner Solidarity, Equality, Sustainability, a theme that signals our determination to put people —not profits— at the centre of global decision-making.

Our high-level priorities are clear and interlinked: firstly, inclusive economic growth, industrialisation, employment and the reduction of inequality. Secondly, food security in an era of climate disruption. Thirdly, harnessing artificial intelligence and broader technological innovation for sustainable development.

Complementing these three priorities is our drive for disaster-risk resilience and fair debt-relief architecture so that climate-vulnerable and heavily-indebted countries are not forced to choose between servicing loans and saving lives.

The stakes could not be higher. The International Labour Organisation (ILO) reports that global unemployment is hovering near a historic low of 5 per cent, yet globally the average for young people remains stubbornly high—about 13 per cent worldwide, and more than double that in many developing economies.

Here at home, 4.8 million South Africans aged 15–34 are unemployed; 58 per cent of them have never had a single day of paid work, and our youth unemployment rate climbed to 46.1 per cent in the first quarter of this year.

Beyond the headline numbers lurk deeper structural hazards: one in five young Africans is classified as NEET—“not in employment, education or training”—and those already in work face a future in which artificial-intelligence–driven automation could render up to 40 per cent of entry-level jobs obsolete by 2035, according to the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report.

Compounding that uncertainty are intersecting crises of mental-health fragility, climate anxiety, escalating conflict-driven displacement, and the rising cost of living that now consumes, on average, 38 per cent of a young person’s monthly income across the G20.

Add to that what the economist Adam Tooze calls a global “poly-crisis” which includes amongst others geopolitical polarisation, climate-related disasters, food-price shocks and widening digital divides. And it becomes clear why the South African presidency has framed 2025 as a make-or-break moment for multilateral cooperation.

Geopolitically, the world is also experiencing what some economists such as Mark Blyth, Mohamed El-Erian, and Michael Spence call a “permacrisis”: the United States and China are locked in an uneasy dance of de-risking, Russia’s war in Ukraine continues to reshape energy and grain markets, and simmering conflicts from the Red Sea to the Sahel threaten already fragile supply chains. At the same time, global public debt has surpassed US $100 trillion, forcing developing nations to divert scarce resources away from youth programmes toward interest payments.

Meanwhile, an AI- powered misinformation wave is eroding democratic trust, ranking as the one of the greatest global risks for 2027.

Against that backdrop, our objectives, outcomes and outputs for the G20 must be unapologetically youth-centred.

In the Employment Working Group of the Sherpa Track we are negotiating a compact on youth employment and skills, building on the Antalya Goals but adding targets for digital-economy apprenticeships, recognition of micro-credentials and mutual portability of qualifications across G20 members. If, endorsed by leaders, the compact will hopefully translate into an estimated 10 million paid internship placements over five years, with a gender-parity clause and an annual public score-card so you can hold the G20 accountable.

In the Finance Track, we are advancing an “Innovation & Inclusion Facility” financed through blended public-private instruments to support start-ups led by women and young people in frontier technologies and green manufacturing. Its first-phase endowment of US $3 billion— will be disbursed via challenge funds that prioritise township and rural enterprises, with a target of 150 000 sustainable jobs by 2027.

In the Agriculture Working Group and the Environment and Climate Sustainability Working Group, we are championing a Just Agri-Transition Facility that links smallholder farmers including youth to climate-smart finance and regional value chains. Beyond financing climate-resilient seed and drip- irrigation systems, the facility will underwrite a Pan-African farmers marketplace app that targeted at youth that guarantees offtake agreements with regional supermarket chains.

Finally, our AI priority will hopefully deliver a “Pan-G20 Youth Digital Corps,” a volunteer-to-employment pipeline that pairs South African coders with continental and global partners to solve public-sector data challenges.

It is worth recalling that the Y20 track itself—formally recognised at the Toronto Summit in 2010—has a proud history of shaping G20 commitments. In 2013 the Y20 communiqué in Saint Petersburg introduced the concept of a global youth- entrepreneurship fund; two years later Antalya adopted it as the G20 Entrepreneurship Action Plan.

The Riyadh Y20 (2020) mainstreamed digital-skills portability, and Bali’s Y20 (2022) placed mental health on the G20 agenda for the first time.

But policy blueprints are only half the battle. The real measure of success is whether the unemployed graduate in Umlazi, the robotics club in eThekwini or the young agro- processor in the Midlands actually see their prospects change. That requires three forms of youth agency. First, organised voice: we rely on your ideas—expressed through the Y20, hackathons, campus dialogues and social-media policy labs—to keep the presidency honest. Secondly, entrepreneurial action: South Africa’s rapidly expanding start-up ecosystem already attracts almost half of all African venture-capital deals; with targeted reforms on intellectual-property protection and venture-debt facilities, we can double that share by 2027, generating an estimated 150 000 new jobs. Thirdly, civic guardianship: Mokaba taught us that liberation is meaningless without vigilance; likewise, inclusion is meaningless if corruption, gender-based violence and xenophobia erode the social contract that holds a democracy together.

Colleagues, the G20 was born in crisis after the 1997 Asian financial meltdown and re-energised amid the 2008 crash. It now faces a generation-defining test: can it re- tool the global economy so that young people inherit not debts and droughts but opportunity and hope? South Africa believes it can—if the world finally listens to its largest demographic- the youth. That is why every communiqué we draft, every working-group chair we appoint, and every Leaders’ Declaration paragraph we negotiate must carry a footnote that reads simply: “Youth advised.”

In conclusion, let me end where I began, with memory and responsibility. Forty-nine years ago, Hector Pieterson’s lifeless body shocked the conscience of humankind, and yet the spark that flickered in 1976 still burns—here, in eThekwini, in the hearts of every young South African insisting that tomorrow must be better than today.

As we move toward the 2025 Johannesburg Summit, I invite you to seize this G20 moment not as a distant diplomatic multilateral ritual but as your platform, your megaphone, your laboratory. Poke it, provoke it , stoke it, shape it, shove it, and shake it—until its outcomes carry the unmistakable imprint of youth i.e. boldness, innovation , energy and disruption.

As the Cuban Revolutionary and Internationalist Che Guevara said,’ The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall’.

It is the youth who must shake the tree, to realise economic and financial inclusion within the global governance architecture of the G20!

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