Pretoria – President Cyril Ramaphosa has announced the formation of an “Extraordinary Committee of Independent Experts” to tackle global wealth and income inequality under South Africa’s G20 presidency. The new advisory panel, chaired by Nobel Prize-winning economist Professor Joseph Stiglitz, will prepare the first G20-wide report on the impact of inequality and present policy options to world leaders at the November summit.

The committee’s creation follows warnings from the Presidency that inequality now threatens economic growth, stability, and social cohesion worldwide.

“People across the world know how extreme inequality undermines their dignity and chance for a better future,” Ramaphosa said at the launch event, pointing to vaccine access, food, and energy costs, and debt as drivers of the widening gap.

Professor Stiglitz added that, “Inequality has widened to extremes that threaten democracy itself and should be a concern of all of us; the profound rise in the discontents of mismanaged globalisation which in many places has contributed to this growth of inequality is also evident. Inequality was always a choice – and G20 nations have the power to choose a different path, on a range of economic and social policies.”

The six-member panel includes Professor Jayati Ghosh, UNAIDS executive director Winnie Byanyima, Dr Adriana Abdenur of Brazil, and South African economists Professor Imraan Valodia and Dr Wanga Zembe-Mkabile. The committee will work through the G20 Sherpa’s Office at the Department of International Relations and Co-operation, with recommendations due before the summit.

Whilst South Africa is often identified as one of the world’s most unequal societies, a read of the country’s economic data suggests that its very high rate of unemployment, which is a multiple of the global average, is the source of what is often presented as a disparity in the earnings.

Seen through the global policy lens, the new committee marks a significant step by South Africa to shape the G20’s agenda on inequality, raising both the stakes and expectations for November’s summit.