The F20 team are delighted to announce that Raisa Cole, Organisational Development Manager at Democracy Works Foundation, has recently joined the Foundations Platform 20 Steering Group as its South African co-chair. Cole’s position on the leadership team will see her represent South Africa ahead of the country’s G20 Presidency in 2025 and beyond, supporting a smooth transition from the Brazilian presidency to South Africa. The South African G20 Presidency will prioritise people-driven, sustainable development in the Global South, alongside a renewed push for the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.
Raisa Cole’s work at Democracy Works Foundation is primarily concerned with principles of intersectional environmental feminism, recognising the interconnectedness of social justice, racial and gender equity, and environmental sustainability. Representing one of F20’s South African members, where she also leads the organisation’s Climate Governance Programme, she works to amplify the voices and ingenuity of those at the forefront of the climate crises. Current F20 Chair, Alice de Moraes Amorim Vogas believes working alongside Raisa Cole will help to actualize F20’s ambitious goals, explaining, “Having Raisa and Democracy Works Foundation on the lead, an organization with a deep expertise in energy transition and local governance in South Africa makes me very confident that we will have good conditions to contribute with solutions for designing practical solutions to strengthen the linkages between development and climate thinking and policy.”
The F20 Steering Group
The F20 Steering Group is currently chaired by Alice de Moraes Amorim Vogas (Partnerships and Communications Director, Institute for Climate and Society), representing Brazil, and is co-chaired by Neera Nundy (Partner and Co-Founder of Dasra), who represents India. This structure intentionally mirrors the G20’s TROIKA mechanism, which ensures continuity and knowledge sharing between previous, current, and future G20 presidencies. Installing a cycle of leadership that is female-led and which champions intersectional perspectives is “a healthy change that shows how much F20 is committed to walk the talk on embracing diverse perspectives and knowledge,” according to Alice de Moraes Amorim Vogas.
Speaking about the benefits of this structure, particularly as it connects three women working towards international development, Cole shares “having three women from these countries will bring more intersectionality to F20’s advocacy and lobbying work and ensure that issues of gender equity, social inclusion and socio-economic rights are mainstreamed within climate and sustainability efforts.”
This perspective is echoed by co-chair Neera Nundy, who adds, “It’s particularly exciting to see three women appointed to our F20 leadership, this diverse leadership brings unique insights into gender-specific challenges in development and climate action. Our perspectives will be crucial in ensuring initiatives are truly inclusive and address the needs of all community members, especially those most vulnerable to climate change impacts.”
2025 G20 Presidency
The upcoming G20 Presidency marks the first time in history that any country on the African continent will host the G20. This follows the inclusion of the African Union as a permanent member of the G20. Giving this regional bloc a permanent seat at the table amplifies representation of the African Union’s population of 1.4 billion, and suggests that voices within Africa and the Global South will be featured more prominently than ever before. The core focus areas of the South African 2025 Presidency are; setting a Global South climate agenda, championing sustainable African development, and strengthening partnerships between the Global North and Global South. Cole’s core goals for her position as co-chair are in line with these focuses, namely her motivation to initiate a membership drive across Africa, and to promote more South-South collaboration and peer learning amongst F20 members for targeted advocacy and agenda setting in specific geographies.
This focal point — of actively including the Global South in decision-making and advocacy processes — is important to the F20 Steering Group as a whole. According to Neera Nundy (Dasra), this perspective is a guiding principle in the lead up to the 2025 G20 Presidency:
“Our core ambitions leading up to the 2025 G20 presidency are twofold: First, to ensure that the Global South’s leadership in the G20 process translates into tangible policies that reflect our shared challenges and aspirations. Second, to leverage our collective experiences in tackling development issues, particularly learning from South Africa’s innovative approaches in various sectors. Collaborating with our partners across the Global South will be instrumental in actualizing these goals.”
With Raisa Cole as a key member of the F20 Steering Group, our work towards F20’s 2024 Recommendations will be bolstered, specifically our call to make the G20 Social a baseline of future social participation for upcoming presidencies, and the imperative to elevate voices of the Global South and future generations in decision-making processes. In preparing to apply the F20 Recommendations to her work in 2025, Cole explains that her ambitions for her work as F20 co-chair involve participatory and responsive engagement:
“My ambition is to build on the work of previous chairs to shift the organisation to be more member-driven. I believe that there is an unprecedented wealth of knowledge from these members on the effectiveness of development intervention approaches and typologies. This ‘impact data’ is invaluable and I hope to leverage it to inform our G20 Recommendations and agenda setting work beyond the G20. My vision for F20 is a platform whose reach goes beyond the G20 — as a moment — but leverages opportunities for strategic climate and sustainability advocacy and decision making amongst G20 countries.”
Speaking about the addition of Raisa Cole, F20’s Secretary General Katrin Harvey, said “Our organisation significantly benefits from the expert guidance and close collaboration offered by our Steering Group. Adding Raisa Cole to this exchange, with her focuses on intersectional environmental feminism, racial and gender equity, and social and environmental justice, will only expand the impact of our collective efforts. I have no doubt that this ambitious and optimistic group will lead F20 and all our members forward in our journey towards a world that leaves no one behind.”
“One thing is clear: We can’t solve the challenges of our times based on reinforcing divisions, but rather strengthening the collaboration and solution driven action that puts us in the right direction to promote more equality, peace, democracy and the decarbonization with prosperity of our economies.” — Alice de Moraes Amorim Vogas
We’re proud to welcome Raisa Cole as a co-chair in our Steering Group and are looking forward to the many ways her unique insights will enrich our upcoming work. The first Steering Group meeting with Raisa Cole as co-chair is set to take place on 30 October 2024. To follow the important work our Steering Group contributes to, we invite you to connect with them on LinkedIn.
Chair: Alice de Moraes Amorim Vogas (iCS)
Co-chairs:
Raisa Cole (Democracy Works Foundation)
Secretary General: Katrin Harvey (F20)