South Africa, ranked by the World Bank as the world’s most unequal country, is using its G20 presidency to push reducing extreme wealth concentration to the top of the global agenda. A Stiglitz-led task force recommends creating an IPCC-style panel to measure and tackle wealth inequality; its report finds the top 1% captured 41% of new wealth from 2000–2024, while the poorest 50% received just 1%. Local voices in Johannesburg — living between luxury high-rises and informal settlements — underscore the urgent human consequences of these statistics.
South Africa Aims to Make Tackling Inequality the G20's Lasting Legacy
South Africa, ranked by the World Bank as the world’s most unequal country, is using its G20 presidency to push reducing extreme wealth concentration to the top of the global agenda. A Stiglitz-led task force recommends creating an IPCC-style panel to measure and tackle wealth inequality; its report finds the top 1% captured 41% of new wealth from 2000–2024, while the poorest 50% received just 1%. Local voices in Johannesburg — living between luxury high-rises and informal settlements — underscore the urgent human consequences of these statistics.
11:44 AM, 11/20/2025Economy
From corrugated metal shacks huddled along the narrow Jukskei River, the gleaming towers of Johannesburg’s wealthiest district sit less than two miles away — a vivid illustration of South Africa’s extreme economic divide.
Paths lined with bags of refuse destined for recycling lead to a communal vegetable plot tended by residents of an informal settlement at the foot of Sandton’s high-rises, the city’s financial heart. A makeshift electrical connection lights the doorway of the rusty shack where Bryan lives with his wife and their nine-year-old son.
"Here in Sandton, there are a lot of people and companies that have money," said the 34-year-old security guard, who gave only his first name because he feared losing his job. "But we don't have access."
The skyline of mirrored office blocks towering over the settlement is a blunt illustration of the gulf between rich and poor in South Africa, a country the World Bank ranks as the most unequal on earth.
G20 Presidency Puts Inequality in the Spotlight
As Johannesburg hosts leaders from the Group of 20, President Cyril Ramaphosa has placed reducing inequality at the centre of the summit and urged that it become a defining "legacy" of the first African-hosted G20. He appointed an expert task force chaired by Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz to advise the summit and backed its proposal to create a panel — modelled on the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — to measure and address extreme concentrations of wealth.
The Stiglitz-led report finds the world’s richest 1% captured 41% of all new wealth between 2000 and 2024, while the poorest 50% received just 1% of that growth. In South Africa, researchers at the University of the Witwatersrand estimate the top 0.1% own more than a quarter of the country’s wealth.
Everyday Consequences
These statistics have real, everyday consequences. Unemployment hovers near 32% and stark wage gaps widen the divide. Almost one in four households rely on government grants of R500 (about $29) a month as their main income. For families like Bryan’s, monthly bus fare to the public school in Alexandra — one of Johannesburg’s rougher townships — is roughly R400 (about $23), while private-school fees in nearby Sandton can exceed $10,000 a year.
Dominating the business district above Bryan’s settlement is an ornate tower called The Marc, whose generator-powered claims promise that customers will "never be left in the dark" amid the country's unreliable power supply. The informal settlement below lacks such services; residents pooled cash to build a shared toilet. "We do everything ourselves," Bryan said.
Asked whether he expected visiting billionaires at the G20 to change things for people like him, he replied: "I don't think they will do something better for us."
Democracy, Taxes and Social Cohesion
Advocates argue the proposed panel and a stronger global focus on wealth concentration are essential not only for fairness but for democracy itself. "If the rich are not taxed fairly, they opt out of democracy," said Isobel Frye, a G20 policy adviser at Oxfam. "You buy your medical aid, your private education, your security — you are no longer part of the system, and that undermines collective governance."
The G20 presidency gives South Africa a platform to push these ideas globally: whether this will translate into concrete international mechanisms to measure and reduce extreme wealth concentration remains to be seen.