BRICS Expansion 'Fills Up Missing Pieces': Zambian Scholar

"And I think for the first time, we're going to achieve south-south trade. Trade has normally been dictated or made between the developed countries and developing countries. Now we are going to see that emerging economies are now going to dominate and learn how to do business with [each other]," Haabazoka stated.

"If this is going to be a success and there will be independence in the way that these countries do business, some provide raw materials and some provide finished goods, I don't think any other single country is going to have instruments of bullying other countries in terms of sanctions and other instruments that are normally used to control the development of other countries," he said.

"Experience has confirmed that the developing countries basically had no say in the way multilateral institutions like the World Bank, the IMF were running and the United Nations had no representation for developing countries on the Security Council, there was no veto power, not even for a bloc such as the African Union (AU)," Haabazoka stated.

"And no country under BRICS wants to dominate the other. So I think this is going to be a huge success," the Zambian scholar noted.

"So this puts at a disadvantage, especially African countries that have to produce and sell something for them to get the reserve currency, like the U.S. dollar. But the US simply needs to go and print money. When we had COVID, when we had the 2008 economic crisis, money was just printed, dollars were printed, and they were given to big US corporations. They were given to European countries, and Africa did not receive anything. And Africa unfortunately cannot print [money], because the international financial architecture was created that first for us to do international trade we need the dollar. So with the dollar countries, especially the [African] countries, are remaining poor, whereas the developed countries are remaining more rich because they have the ability to print money," Haabazoka said.

"I think that the choice of countries Argentina, Egypt, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Ethiopia to be new members was made based on their importance in the various geographical locations. When you look at Ethiopia, for example, Ethiopia houses the headquarters of the African Union. Ethiopia is a fast-developing country. When you look at Egypt, it's a major power in Africa and has the largest army, for example, and one of the most interesting economies in the world," he stated.

"Now we have Egypt to be able to pull together African Arab countries. We have Ethiopia also dealing with countries above the equator. And it being the center is more like bringing together the African Union into BRICS. So the expansion is quite interesting. And I think Africa is going to be a major benefactor. Ethiopia is the capital city of Africa [as it hosts the AU’s Commission]. And bringing a country whose capital is the capital city of the African continent will basically link all embassies, all communication and all countries with BRICS. So it makes it very easy for BRICS to deal with the African continent," he stated.

"Africa [...] I think is one of the most represented [among] all continents in the world in BRICS. So Africans are going to consider this as their own organization. And indeed, BRICS is basically an African project," he outlined.

"So, we hope to tap into funding from the New Development Bank, also known as the BRICS bank, to tap into the resources from China, for example, in terms of infrastructure development, from India, in terms of trade, pharmaceuticals, Russia – mineral resources, fertilizers and other equipment, both military and useful agriculture. We hope to see Russian vehicles on the African continent," the speaker said.

"This is a very good development. There are a lot of African countries that want to join BRICS. Algeria is one of them. Nigeria, which is a giant of Africa, also wants to join that. A lot more countries, if you saw the attendance, it was very huge," Haabazoka noted. "I'm sure countries like Zimbabwe are also willing to join. So I think the mood towards BRICS is quite overwhelming and the sooner these countries are admitted into BRICS, the better, because there's a lot of pressure coming from other parts of the world to ensure that BRICS doesn't grow. So this is an opportunity that we should look at to ensure that BRICS expands."