Ramaphosa Pivots to Asia with Appearance at ASEAN Summit 2025
From 22 to 28 October 2025, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa undertook a three-nation Asian tour and attended the 47th ASEAN Summit (#ASEAN2025) in Kuala Lumpur. Faced with punitive tariffs from Trump, South Africa is stepping up its economic diversification strategy with a whirlwind tour of Indonesia, Vietnam and Malaysia. On the sidelines of #ASEAN2025, he also held bilateral meetings with several ASEAN member state leaders.
To motivate his journey to the East, Ramaphosa underscored that South Africa must diversify its trade and investment relations. Being one of the most dynamic regions, Asia was a compelling choice and the ASEAN Summit was the perfect opportunity.
South Africa is already exporting agricultural produce to some ASEAN member states, and Ramaphosa would like to expand the partnership into the mining sector. For instance, Indonesia has successfully graduated from merely extracting #CriticalMinerals to producing rechargeable batteries for Electric Vehicles (#EV).
Thus, Ramaphosa welcomes #ASEAN countries to invest in South Africa to share their experience in Local Value Addition (#LVA) or #downstreaming. He places the partnership within the context of South-South Cooperation and solidarity among states of the #GlobalSouth. ASEAN also sees great potential in the single market of more than one billion consumers created by the #AfCFTA.
Ramaphosa harked back to the Spirit of the Bandung Conference, held in Indonesia in 1955, that brought Africa and Asia together. Going further back, the Dutch brought laborers from their outposts in South-East Asia to develop the new Cape colony in South Africa. Today, the descendants are known as Cape Malay and form an integral part of the rainbow nation of South Africa.
South Africa will be hosting the G20 Summit 2025 (#G20Summit2025) soon and currently Indonesia is the only ASEAN Member State in the G20. The EU and AU are already in the G20, and some quarters are of the opinion that perhaps a G20 spot for ASEAN should be contemplated. On another note, it is worth noting that US President Trump attended the ASEAN Summit in Malaysia, but has publicly declared that he will skip the G20 Summit in South Africa.
“We see great potential in strengthening cooperation between ASEAN and AU… Although we are separated by the Indian Ocean, South Africa and South-East Asia are closer now than we have ever been before,” Ramaphosa concluded.