By Abdulwasiu Hassan
Ethiopia and Egypt's inclusion along with Argentina, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Iran in the expanded BRICS pantheon announced on Thursday at the group's summit in South Africa signals a more diverse and inclusive order in the cooperation matrix of developing economies.
President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa, who made the announcement, said the membership of the six new entrants into the bloc starts in January 2024.
For Ethiopia, the culmination of the slow but inexorable transition to BRICS membership marks a tectonic shift that Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali described as "a great moment".
"Ethiopia stands ready to cooperate with all for an inclusive and prosperous global order," he posted on X, the microblogging platform formerly known as Twitter.
President Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan of the UAE shared Ali's delight and enthusiasm. "We respect the vision of the BRICS leadership and appreciate the inclusion of the UAE as a member of this important group," he wrote on X.
Ditto Iran, which termed its inclusion in the group as "a strategic victory" for its foreign policy after suffering Western sanctions for years.
The BRICS wall
BRICS is an acronym derived from "BRIC", coined in 2001 by the Goldman Sachs economist, Jim O'Neil, to denote four developing economies with massive growth potential — Brazil, Russia, India and China.
The addition of South Africa in 2010, which brought the "S" to "BRIC", made it a community representing about 40% of the world's population and around 25% of a global economy seeking a new financial niche devoid of Western dominance.
In 2006, the foreign ministers of the first four countries in the group began an informal meeting that led to a formal annual conclave by 2009 before South Africa was let in.
At this year's annual summit, all the leaders of the BRICS countries were in South Africa, except President Vladimir Putin of Russia, who joined the meeting virtually but his foreign minister Sergey Lavrov attended in person.
"India has always believed that the addition of new members will further strengthen BRICS as an organisation and give our shared effort a new impetus," said Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India at the summit.
President Xi Jinping of China described the group's expansion as a "historic" move that "shows the determination of BRICS countries for unity and cooperation with other developing nations".
In a recorded speech at the BRICS Summit, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the group was on course to meet the aspirations of most of the world's population.
"We cooperate on the principles of equality, partnership support, and respect for each other’s interests, and this is the essence of the future-oriented strategic course of our association, a course that meets the aspirations of the main part of the world community, the so-called global majority," Putin said.
Long-term prospects
Analysts believe the expanded economic bloc can change how things operate in international finance.
“This global union now is going to be a stronger body with a much larger amount of GDP," Dr Isa Abdullahi of the Department of Economics at Nigeria's Federal University of Kashere told TRT Afrika.
“What this shows is that we are going to have a new global trend, and an alternative global financial order."
The flip side of the coin is the prospect of BRICS facing a stronger challenge from those currently in charge of global finance.
"It isn't going to be easy for BRICS to continue to develop this way, of course, without having challenges from the traditional bodies such as the IMF, World Bank, Paris Club, London Club and so on," Dr Abdullahi said.
The good news is the combined financial might of the expanded confederation of developing economies.
"With new members like Saudi Arabia comes a very large amount of money. Argentina as well. The group will gather more strength, they will gather more wealth. They will have more financial alternatives to traditional global bodies responsible for funding worldwide," Dr Abdullahi said.
Like many observers, Sulaiman Dahiru, a former ambassador of Nigeria to Sudan, believes the expansion of BRICS is meant to challenge the economic dominance of the Western powers, especially the US. The rationale behind the bloc wanting to have as many countries as possible couldn't be clearer.
"China and Russia are expanding their reach to the third world, aimed at whittling down or supplanting the economic and political dominance of the Western world, especially America," Dahiru explained.
He described the new BRICS configuration as an economic union whose members may have differing political views. Still, he will find common ground on economic issues to take on the established powers.
Bigger and stronger
Experts agree that countries still need to be admitted into the economic bloc and will likely continue pushing to access it.
"The world is having a problem getting financial assistance and adding to development potential. If we go back a bit, we will find out that most of the traditional lending countries, and traditional lending bodies were the colonialists and imperialists," Dr Abdullahi said.
According to him, countries are trying to join the BRICS group primarily to get a better deal in project funding.
"Most developing countries would like to look for an alternative source of income. Most of these loans that are being given by international bodies like the IMF, World Bank and the like come with a lot of conditionalities," he said.
For instance, projects in Uganda worth almost US $2 billion are being held to ransom by the World Bank as it seeks to pressure the East African country into reviewing a new anti-LGBTQ+ law by freezing future funding.
Dr Abdullahi said another reason many developing countries would continue to lobby with BRICS for entry is their shared history, including being colonised.
Dahiru agrees that the economic advantage of joining the union would push developing countries into knocking on BRICS' door.
"These countries have seen the economic advantage of being part of BRICS. The bloc is about economics rather than politics, more so because each country is either a liberal democracy, quasi democratic or outright one-party," he said.
