South Africa: 5 New Nations Agree to Join BRICS

Facts

• South Africa's Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor has confirmed that Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Ethiopia, Iran, and Egypt have accepted the invitation to join the BRICS group of emerging economies from Jan. 1 that was extended to them along with Argentina at a summit last year.¹
• The bloc accepted the new Argentine government's decision not to join BRICS despite the previous administration's successful membership application, the minister added at a press conference on Wednesday.²
• According to Pandor, 34 countries have expressed their interest in joining BRICS to Russia, which has assumed the chairmanship of the group from South Africa. In August, the BRICS' core members China, Russia, Brazil, India, and South Africa agreed on expanding the group at a summit in Johannesburg, South Africa.³
• The bloc, Pandor said, is creating a so-called BRICS partner country model to integrate 17 nations not admitted as full members. To bypass what the minister described as an 'unfair and costly' dollar-based international monetary system, a framework is also being developed to allow members to use their national currencies in trade between BRICS countries.⁴
• On Tuesday, the governor of the Russian Central Bank, Elvira Nabiullina, said that as the group's chair, Russia will propose several crucial initiatives to improve cooperation between the BRICS countries. These measures include promoting the mutual recognition of credit ratings and combating money laundering.⁵
• Including the new members, the BRICS economic group boasts a total population of some 3.5B people and a combined GDP of more than $28.5T, representing around 28% of the global economy. The next BRICS annual summit is set to take place in the Russian city of Kazan in October.⁶

Sources: ¹Bloomberg, ²ThePrint, ³The Japan Times, ⁴businesstech.co.za, ⁵UNI India and ⁶AfricaNews.

Narratives

• Pro-establishment narrative, as provided by Forbes. Despite all the hype surrounding BRICS and its alleged growing global influence, the group is unlikely to surpass the G7 as the world's most powerful economic bloc in the years to come. The high-flying vision of reshaping the supposedly unjust, US-led global order will fail due to the group's political, economic, and cultural fragmentation. For example, it's doubtful that the world's largest democracy, India, will accept the growing dominance of autocratic China. Growth alone is no guarantee of success, and BRICS has no solution to its founding defect.
• Establishment-critical narrative, as provided by The Hill. The BRICS expansion is further proof that the multipolar world order is taking shape and that the bloc is a driving force behind this trend. An increasing number of Global South countries are rejecting the West's efforts to impose its political and economic will on them. It's precisely from its heterogeneity that the BRICS draws its strength and overcomes the differences and disputes between countries such as India and China. BRICS' growth illustrates the attractiveness of this concept in contrast to the West's unipolar model dominated by the US.

Predictions