What it means
The Group of Twenty (popularly known as G20) is an international forum of both developing and developed countries that seeks to find solutions to global economic and financial issues. The supreme audit institution (SAI) of the country holding the G20 presidency chairs the SAI20 engagement group. Therefore, when South Africa assumed the presidency of G20 for 2025, the Auditor-General of South Africa (AGSA) assumed the chair of the SAI20 2025 from 1 December 2024 to 30 November 2025.
The formation, which plays a pivotal role in promoting global transparency and accountability, is chaired by the auditor-general of South Africa for the 2025 calendar year. SAI20 emerged in response to the critical need for heightened oversight and accountability during the extraordinary disbursement of public funds to combat the covid-19 pandemic. The importance of balancing pandemic response efforts with achieving sustainable development goals reinforced the necessity for transparency in public financial management across nations and the formation of SAI20.
G20 Themes
The theme for South Africa’s G20 Presidency is Solidarity, Equality, Sustainability.
The theme guides the priorities of the Working Groups in both the Sherpa and Finance Tracks and also informs the High-Level Deliverables of South Africa’s G20 Presidency.
Solidarity
Solidarity signifies a unified effort and mutual support among member nations. It is the recognition that in an interconnected world, the challenges faced by one nation can have ripple effects globally. This principle emphasises cooperation, empathy, and collective action, ensuring that no country is left behind, especially in times of crisis.
Equality
Equality refers to ensuring fair treatment, opportunities, and advancement for all individuals and nations, irrespective of their economic status, gender, race, geographic location, or other characteristics. It underscores the need to address systemic disparities and promote social justice on a global scale.
Sustainability
Sustainability is about meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. It integrates economic growth, social inclusion, and environmental protection, ensuring long-term health and stability of all people and our planet. As major global actors, G20 nations play a pivotal role in driving sustainable development.
Key Milestones
The Group of Twenty (popularly known as G20) is an international forum of both developing and developed countries that seeks to find solutions to global economic and financial issues. The supreme audit institution (SAI) of the country holding the G20 presidency chairs the SAI20 engagement group. Therefore, when South Africa assumed the presidency of G20 for 2025, the Auditor-General of South Africa (AGSA) assumed the chair of the SAI20 2025 from 1 December 2024 to 30 November 2025.
The formation, which plays a pivotal role in promoting global transparency and accountability, is chaired by the auditor-general of South Africa for the 2025 calendar year. SAI20 emerged in response to the critical need for heightened oversight and accountability during the extraordinary disbursement of public funds to combat the covid-19 pandemic. The importance of balancing pandemic response efforts with achieving sustainable development goals reinforced the necessity for transparency in public financial management across nations and the formation of SAI20. Some of the key milestones achieved while South Africa served as chair include hosting the following engagements:
- Technical Meeting (5-6 February 2025): Directors of member supreme audit institutions (SAIs) came together for in-depth discussions on the critical themes for 2025. Through these deliberations SAIs aligned based on their shared insight and on best practices to reinforce their roles in shaping public policy and driving positive change in governance for economic growth.
- Draft Declaration Discussion Meeting (5-6 March 2025): The Draft Declaration Discussion meeting is at a director-level and follows the SAI20 Technical Meeting. This engagement considered the diverse contexts, challenges and recommendations from participating countries to shape the final declaration.
- Senior Officials Meeting (15-16 April 2025): The senior officials meeting's primary objective was to establish a clear path to advance the SAI20 Communique, which delineated the collective posture of the member SAIs and their contributions to the broader G20 agenda.
- SAI20 Summit (24-25 June 2025): The SAI20 Summit is a gathering of heads of supreme audit institutions (SAIs) from member countries that considered the outcomes of the earlier SAI20 Technical Meeting, Draft Declaration Meeting, SAI20 Senior Officials Meeting and agreed on the final SAI20 Communique.
The 2025 SAI20 presidency focused on two critical themes:
- Unlocking and leveraging public infrastructure funding for equality, sustainable growth, and bringing improvement to the lives of citizens.
- Collaborative and integrative efforts for a future-ready workforce – bridging the skills gap in sustainable economic growth.
The Auditor-General South Africa is proud to have supported the auditor-general as she chaired SAI20 in 2025.
Meetings
Some of the key milestones achieved while South Africa served as chair include hosting the following engagements:
Technical Meeting
5-6 February 2025 - Directors of member supreme audit institutions (SAIs) came together for in-depth discussions on the critical themes for 2025. Through these deliberations SAIs aligned based on their shared insight and on best practices to reinforce their roles in shaping public policy and driving positive change in governance for economic growth.
Draft Declaration Discussion Meeting
5-6 March 2025 - The Draft Declaration Discussion meeting is at a director-level and follows the SAI20 Technical Meeting. This engagement considered the diverse contexts, challenges and recommendations from participating countries to shape the final declaration.
Senior Officials Meeting
15-16 April 2025 - The senior officials meeting's primary objective was to establish a clear path to advance the SAI20 Communique, which delineated the collective posture of the member SAIs and their contributions to the broader G20 agenda.
SAI20 Summit
24-25 June 2025 - The SAI20 Summit is a gathering of heads of supreme audit institutions (SAIs) from member countries that considered the outcomes of the earlier SAI20 Technical Meeting, Draft Declaration Meeting, SAI20 Senior Officials Meeting and agreed on the final SAI20 Communique.
2025 Recommendations
- Governance: Establish global frameworks for infrastructure finance assessment, empowering stakeholders, including SAIs, to pinpoint and address barriers to funding and promote sustainable development.
Promote collaboration among governments, supreme audit institutions, international organisations, civil society and the citizenry to create robust systems that can effectively manage, monitor and audit public infrastructure funding.
Encourage enforcement of laws and regulations that govern infrastructure funding and utilisation, including related anti-corruption measures.
Assess the efficiency of programmes and projects before, during and after implementation, based on clearly defined norms and objectives.
Encourage the updating of laws and regulations relating to procurement and public-private partnerships to facilitate efficient infrastructure funding and management.
Enact laws that codify environmental and social safeguards in large-scale infrastructure projects - Planning: Adopt multi-stakeholder, collaborative approaches to responsive infrastructure planning involving relevant roleplayers and the citizenry to assist with early problem and needs identification, triggering of proactive corrective action and promoting equitable investments.
- Project delivery: Adopt best practices in financial planning and project management to optimise the use of available resources, direct them to priority projects and ensure that projects are completed on time, within budget and at the necessary quality.
- Use of technology and data: Adopt data-driven decision making to provide valuable insights into infrastructure needs, project performance and the socioeconomic impact of investments.
Improve data collection and transparency in data sharing, cognisant of national conditions and laws of G20 members, to enable effective monitoring of public policies by SAIs and civil society.
Use technology and digital platforms to improve transparency and citizen engagement in infrastructure projects. - Operation and maintenance: Place ongoing emphasis on lifecycle asset management, including maintenance, to ensure sustainability in service delivery and to optimise value for money.
- SAI mandates: Mandate SAIs to assess bilateral infrastructure financing agreements between G20 members to provide recommendations for improving transparency and compliance and share best practices and value-formoney outcomes aligned with country priorities.
- Governance: Review the country’s integrated infrastructure value chain, including planning, financing, implementation and enabling legislation for infrastructure projects, to provide insights on the progress made and its adequacy to achieve the SDG goals
- Use of technology and data: Improve audits of public infrastructure funds by advocating for data transparency, tracking fund flows and assessing investment impact. Use technology to enable auditors to quickly find information and identify issues.
- Audit frameworks and methodologies: Develop frameworks and guidelines for auditing and assessing infrastructure financing to enhance oversight.
Invest in real-time auditing of infrastructure projects dealing with the entire infrastructure value chain.
Establish processes to track and enforce SAI recommendations, which can lead to tangible improvements in project governance and efficiency. - Capacity: Broaden auditors’ skills in areas such as engineering, finance, auditing and project management. Partner with multidisciplinary professional bodies to bolster SAI capabilities to deal with challenges related to complex infrastructure projects.
- Reporting: Regularly produce a whole-of-government and/or infrastructure sector report that provides a comprehensive, consolidated view of government’s success in infrastructure governance, planning, funding, delivery, maintenance and utilisation.
- Governance: Plan for closing the skills gap through proactive skills assessment. Collect data that supports each dimension of the plan to measure success, take corrective action and respond to emerging trends and risks on an ongoing basis.
Ensure that the skills gap is addressed equitably across diverse communities taking into consideration both rural and urban areas, as well as the youth and gender divide.
Reinforce performance measures such as eligibility requirements, support activities, skill transfer into the workplace, as well as placement and job market integration, to the point where the whole value chain of skills development can be subjected to auditing. - Curriculum development: Develop dynamic curricula that equip individuals with the necessary competencies to be future-fit, ensuring that governments consider the full value chain of education – from early childhood development to workforce integration – including the revitalisation of vocational education as a key driver.
Establish guidelines/policies in developing the curriculum that includes strengthening aspects of soft skills and work character to complement hard skills in accordance with workforce needs.
Use technology-based, universally accessible public platforms for developing and sustaining structured learning modules, on-demand skills training and low-cost options to ensure universal skills development access. - Funding: Draft regulations on education budget allocation dealing with the full value chain of events that will lead to the realisation of envisaged economic impact.
Advocate for public-private partnerships, advancing the value of collaboration between government, educational institutions, and the private sector (business) in dealing with the skills gap through ensuring training programmes align with labour market demands.
- Education and skills development system: Attend to the authenticity, lawfulness and effectiveness of skills development funding, including the use of funds to improve basic conditions and technological enablement in under-resourced schools and the orderly increase of intake capacity in urban areas.
- Audit frameworks and methodologies: Adapt audit frameworks and methodologies to changes in the education sector, thus allowing SAIs to remain relevant and ensuring that audits accurately reflect the dynamic nature of education and skills development.
Encourage active citizenry and participation in enhancing transparency and accountability, gaining valuable insights from the lived experiences of affected community members. - Audit focus areas: To effectively address the complex skills gap, SAIs need to strategically select audit areas based on evidence and risk assessment, targeting issues that will have the greatest impact.
Encourage the identification of future critical skills to align educational outcomes and curricula with national development goals.
Ensure that government programmes and policies are implemented effectively and transparently while being cognisant of the full value chain of events required to ensure employment and economic growth. - Capacity: Invest in auditors of the future, through specialised training, knowledge-sharing and integration of new technologies and approaches to gain deeper insights (trends, patterns and potential inefficiencies) into the performance of various government entities within the education and skills ecosystem to improve training programmes.
Integrate data analytics and technology in the audit process to gain deeper insights (trends, patterns and potential inefficiencies) into the performance of various government entities within the education and skills ecosystem to improve training programmes. - Reporting: Regularly produce whole-of-government and/or education sector reports that provide a consolidated view of government’s success in dealing with the full value chain related to skills development.