BRICS Summit: Yet Another Meeting or New World Order?
17:46 21.08.2023 (Updated: 16:56 19.09.2023)
BRICS Summit: Yet Another Meeting or New World Order?
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As the 15th BRICS Summit kicks off tomorrow, your AfroVerdict host discusses the expectations of the event with a South African researcher, covering the significance of the summit as well as some of the points on the agenda.
The primary share of expectation falls on the issue of the admission of new members to the BRICS group, as 23 countries have already filed their applications to join the bloc, according to Mikatekiso Kubayi, a researcher at the Institute for Global Dialogue.
"Prior to this, there wasn't even as much focus and concentration and attention on BRICS until suddenly BRICS started talking about the possibility of expansion and that sort of thing," Kubayi says.
The potential admission of new member states ensues "greater potential cooperation and collaboration in the political sphere".
"Now, if you expand it even more, you have an even bigger population with an even bigger market, you have an even bigger potential pool of resources, even more so for the function of the New Development Bank and its objectives," the researcher states.
Moreover, the BRICS group attracts so many countries due to the values it stands for.
He goes on to explain that some of the reasons for attracting so many countries include BRICS' fostering of 'collaboration, cooperation and peace', while promoting 'fairness in global governance' and the 'democratization of the multilateral system'.
"It's about saying to the whole world that why don't we rather collaborate as opposed to dividing ourselves and creating blocs here and there and creating tensions, but instead rather with towards development because the reality is most of the global population needs and is in dire, maybe even desperate need for development, infrastructure, health care, work, just even jobs, manufacturing. Countries want to take the case of Africa," he explains.
Kubayi admits that while there are those who believe "a new order has already taken foot", he is not sure whether the shift has already happened.
"We can see that there's definitely a great shift in the global balance of power, and that shift will only be become more expressed, more pronounced post this year's summit," Kubayi states.
For more details, check out the entire episode of the AfroVerdict podcast, brought to you by Sputnik Africa.
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