A unique aspect BRICS embodies is a "huge plurality of information", which results "in a statement endorsed by the member states themselves", according to Dr. Rasigan Maharajh, Chief Director of the Institute for Economic Research on Innovation, Tshwane University of Technology.
"Each member country of the original BRICS and now BRICS plus, they come with their own almost autonomous knowledge systems based on their nationally determined borders, culture, tradition. So it's maybe not as uniform or convergent, and that's not a bad thing. That's actually a good thing for the world," Dr. Maharajh explains.
Considering that the BRICS is moving towards representing "a global majority", it becomes ever so critical "to defend the knowledge commons and for us to act against any restrictions on the flow of information".
"We see that in terms of some countries at the moment seeking to constrain other countries' industrial development through the maintenance of an intellectual property regime that actually unfairly prejudices against those whose capacities and capabilities are being revealed," Maharajh states.
As a result, it would be incorrect to blame the "underdevelopment of Africa" on Africa. According to the scholar, "the underdevelopment of Africa directly relates to the overdevelopment of Western Europe and North America".
A lot of the conversation revolved around the way BRICS deconstructs the existing lens through which problems are explained, but only to an extent that simply creates enough new space to develop new ways of conceptualizing these issues from an inwards point of view. This is summed up in Maharajh's following words:
"No longer should we be objects that are researched but be subjects in determining it," Dr Rasigan Maharjh says.
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