UNITED NATIONS WORLD DEVELOPMENT INFORMATION DAY: 24 October 2025

G20 and the BRICS Vision for Shared Prosperity

JOHANNESBURG, GAUTENG, SOUTH AFRICA, October 24, 2025 /EINPresswire.com/ -- 24 October is marked annually as World Development Information Day by the United Nations (UN), reminding us that socio-economic and industrial development is not only an economic process but a shared moral project. The day calls on the world to strengthen international cooperation and deepen public understanding of the interdependent nature of global progress. As the UN notes, “an essential part of the work on development consists of the mobilisation of public opinion in both developing and developed countries in support of set objectives and policies.”

Genuine development requires honesty, participation, and solidarity across all nations — principles soon to be tested as the world gathers for the G20 Summit in Johannesburg.

The 2025 G20 Johannesburg Summit (22–23 November 2025), the first on African soil under President Cyril Ramaphosa, marks a hinge moment in global realignment. South Africa’s presidency, under the motto “Solidarity, Equality, Sustainability,” offers a new architecture for how business, government, and communities might converge around shared purpose.

At summits like the G20, African economies are given the opportunity to call on private industry to join the circle of transformation — to interweave themselves into how Africa and her people choose to self-actualise. Africa has always been rich in resources yet too often marginalised in decision-making. That the G20 now convenes in Johannesburg signals a shift: the Global South is asserting ownership of the agenda.

For multinational corporations such as Anglo American — deeply rooted in Southern Africa for more than a century — this moment carries particular significance. For most of the twentieth century, Anglo American was the symbol of South Africa’s mining might, shaping the economy, employing hundreds of thousands, and influencing both politics and culture.

Today, that legacy is shadowed by retreat. Anglo American is finalising its takeover of Canada’s Teck Resources, shifting its headquarters from London to Vancouver and celebrating the birth of Anglo-Teck, a copper-centric global champion promising shareholders synergies worth US $1.4 billion a year and CA $4.5 billion in guaranteed investment — for Canada.

Yet in South Africa, where Anglo was founded more than 100 years ago, the story looks starkly different. It is a story of disinvestment — of life, livelihoods, land, and legacy eroded as boardrooms shift their gaze abroad.

Companies built on South African land, labour, and lives that choose instead to guarantee investment to Western powers while offering little more than platitudes at home represent business models misaligned with the spirit and ethical code of BRICS. The UN’s call for both developed and developing nations to foster public understanding and participation in development could not be more relevant here. When corporations redirect their investments away from the very societies that built them, they violate not only economic logic but the moral principle of shared responsibility embedded in the UN’s vision of interdependent progress.

This is precisely why summits such as the G20 exist — to ensure that transparency, accountability, and trust are not abstract ideals but enforceable standards. For Africa and the wider Global South, these gatherings must serve as instruments for economic correction to confront the enduring legacies of colonial extraction. For too long, Africa’s mineral wealth has disproportionately enriched economies in the West. When corporations like Anglo American relocate their financial commitments abroad, they send a message about whose futures they deem worth investing in.

Emerging economies deserve better than what the West has historically deemed appropriate for their people. The Johannesburg G20 is therefore an opportunity for BRICS nations to strengthen solidarity and reclaim ownership of the means of value creation. BRICS articulates a new compact of global responsibility that measures economic success by the regenerative prosperity it creates, not only by profits extracted.

The BRICS alliance embodies this evolution: a diplomacy rooted in cooperation, accountability, and development. For the executive management of Anglo American, Teck Resources, and other Western institutions, the G20 language of solidarity, equality, and sustainability may yet be a lesson to learn.

And that is the beauty of BRICS and of G20, that these alliances hold the grace to welcome all stakeholders to engage, to exchange, to learn, and to converge around a common purpose that unites us all.

TLOU MOGALE FOUNDATION
TLOU MOGALE FOUNDATION
+27 76 101 0421
email us here

Legal Disclaimer:

EIN Presswire provides this news content "as is" without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the author above.