Cape Town - Newly elected president of South Africa's ruling African National Congress and country Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa will lead the South African delegation to the 48th World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting that will take place in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, later this month.
The meeting, between 23-26 January in Davos-Klosters, takes place under the theme "Creating a Shared Future in a Fractured World", and seeks to promote a renewed commitment to international collaboration as a way of solving critical global challenges.
In a statement from the South African Presidency, it said that Ramaphosa, who led the SA delegation in 2017, will again this year lead a team comprising government ministers and business leaders, with Minister of Finance Malusi Gigaba being the lead minister and co-ordinator.
"President Jacob Zuma has wished the delegation well in the annual meeting which provides an important platform to market and showcase the country to global business and other key international stakeholders," the Presidency statement said.
It added that Zuma will lead the country's delegation to the 30th African Union Summit in Addis Ababa, scheduled to take place from 22-29 January 2018, with the President also attending the African Peer Review Mechanism/NEPAD sessions on 27 January and the 30th Ordinary Session of the Assembly of the Heads of State and Government of the African Union scheduled to take place 28-29 January.
The WEF meeting will bring together 3 000 leaders from business, government, international organisations, civil society, academia and the arts.
WEF has said that its programme for the 2018 meeting is built around four key objectives, namely Driving Sustained Economic Progress, Navigating a Multipolar and Multiconceptual World, Overcoming Divisions in Society and Shaping the Agile Governance of Technology.
The co-chairs of the 2018 annual meeting in Davos-Klosters are Sharan Burrow, the General-Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) based in Belgium, Fabiola Gianotti, the Director-General of the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Isabelle Kocher, CEO of global energy company the ENGIE Group, Christine Lagarde, the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) based in Washington DC, Ginni Rometty, chairperson, president and CEO of the IBM Corporation, Chetna Sinha, founder and president of Mann Deshi Mahila Bank, and Erna Solberg, the Prime Minister of Norway.