Cape Town: Minister in the Presidency responsible for Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities, Sindisiwe Chikunga, has emphasized that the legacy of South Africa’s G20 Presidency will be judged by transformative outcomes, notably in changing lives, reforming systems, and redistributing power. Chikunga articulated these views during the opening plenary of the Women20 (W20) South Africa Inception Meeting in Cape Town.
According to South African Government News Agency, the W20 serves as the official G20 engagement group dedicated to promoting gender equality and women’s economic empowerment. The 2025 Inception Meeting, themed ‘Women in Solidarity,’ marks a decade of W20 initiatives and brings together over 100 delegates from government, business, academia, and civil society sectors worldwide.
The two-day event, which commenced on Wednesday, gathers global thought leaders, policymakers, and change-makers to discuss innovative solutions and high-level interventions addressing current challenges faced by women. In her address, Chikunga emphasized that the gathering symbolizes a beginning rather than an endpoint in the quest for transformative change for women globally.
Chikunga highlighted the pivotal moment for the African continent to influence global recovery and for the Global South to reimagine the social contract. She called for women’s voices to be integrated into the core of public policy and institutions, invoking the legacy of South African heroines like Charlotte Maxeke, Ruth Mompati, and Albertina Sisulu, underscoring that “freedom without equality is fiction.”
As part of its Chairship of the G20 Empowerment of Women Working Group, South Africa has developed several empowerment programs to advance beyond its G20 term through sustained partnerships. These programs include the transformative emerging industrialists accelerator and the Disability Inclusion Initiative (DII).
The transformative emerging industrialists accelerator aims to support women entrepreneurs in sectors such as energy, maritime, defense, aerospace, platform economies, and agriculture. Participants will receive comprehensive support, including financing, market access, and commercialization, in collaboration with State Owned Entities, private companies, and industry associations.
The DII is South Africa’s flagship initiative to embed disability rights and inclusion into policy and society. It features the establishment of a Disability Inclusion Nerve Centre to drive research on inclusion, create a National Disability Data Observatory, develop early childhood disability screening protocols, and provide capacity-building and support for inclusive schooling and access-enhancing technologies.
Chikunga stressed that these are long-term structural interventions meant to outlive South Africa’s G20 Presidency. She highlighted the importance of data in informing inclusive policy and expressed the country’s readiness to engage with the private sector and multilateral institutions to advance these initiatives.
Chikunga cited findings from the Human Sciences Research Council, noting that women with disabilities remain some of the most marginalized and invisible individuals in society, facing disproportionate violence and exclusion, which she described as a “systemic failure.”