The rise of the Global South is reshaping the architecture of global power. What began in 2006 as a modest grouping of emerging economies, with South Africa officially joining in 2011, has grown into an 11-member grouping spanning four continents, with a growing circle of partner countries actively engaging in the cooperation.
That growing interest tells its own story: for the first time in living memory, many of those seeking to join are not looking for entry into a Western-led club but into an institution built, explicitly, around the principle that no single power should dictate the terms of global development.
For Africa, this is not a peripheral development. It is, in many ways, a homecoming.
While South Africa was among the founding members of BRICS, the 2023 BRICS summit signalled a deepening of the African continent’s stake in the grouping. With Egypt and Ethiopia full members alongside South Africa, Africa has three seats at a table that collectively represents nearly half the world’s population and a growing share of global output.
This is a rare thing in the postwar order: to have an institution in which African states are not merely petitioners at the margins of decisions made elsewhere but co-architects of the rules themselves.
That distinction matters because it addresses a grievance that has shaped African development for more than 70 years. The Bretton Woods institutions that emerged from the postwar settlement came with conditions attached, enforcing austerity, liberalisation and structural adjustment programmes, locking much of sub-Saharan Africa into cycles of debt dependency long after formal independence was achieved.
BRICS, and the New Development Bank it established, offer a different model: development finance without the ideological strings and infrastructure investment that treats sovereignty as a precondition rather than a bargaining chip.
Whatever else is debated about the grouping’s trajectory, this alternative source of capital has given African finance ministries a genuine second option for the first time in a generation, as well as bargaining power in international relations.
The numbers bear this out. In the first half of 2025 alone, the Belt and Road Initiative investment in Africa hit $39 billion, making the continent the single largest destination for that capital worldwide, which is about five times what it received in the same period a year earlier.
Kenya’s Standard Gauge Railway, Djibouti’s ports, Ethiopia’s infrastructure build-out and Nigeria’s special economic zones are not abstractions. They are physical evidence of a Global South beginning to trade and build on its own terms, along corridors it did not have to ask permission to construct.
While challenges remain, the broader trajectory of BRICS cooperation is clear and consequential. As BRICS continues to evolve as a platform for Global South cooperation and as the African Union presses, through BRICS and the G20 alike, for reform of the United Nations Security Council, the direction of travel is becoming clearer: African states are moving from being subjects of global governance to becoming shapers of it.
The continent’s vast reserves of critical minerals, its youthful workforce and its accelerating continental free trade area give it genuine leverage in this new architecture — the kind of leverage it has rarely held before. The task now is to convert the opportunities into greater industrial policy space, technology transfer, value addition and beneficiation deals that can turn raw resources into shared prosperity, rather than simply exchanging one set of external conditions for another.
Since its founding, the BRICS cooperation mechanism has grown into an important platform for the Global South. Africa, with its growing role in the mechanism, is increasingly contributing to this effort.
Sithembiso Bhengu is the director of Chris Hani Institute, a South African think tank.
- BRICS started as a small group of emerging economies in 2006 and now includes 11 members across four continents, with South Africa joining officially in 2011.
- Africa has three full members in BRICS—South Africa, Egypt, and Ethiopia—representing nearly half the world's population and a growing share of global output.
- The BRICS New Development Bank offers African countries development finance without ideological conditions, differing from the traditional Bretton Woods institutions.
- In the first half of 2025, Belt and Road Initiative investments in Africa reached $39 billion, making it the largest destination for that capital worldwide.
- Africa is shifting from being a subject of global governance to a shaper, leveraging its resources, youthful workforce, and continental free trade area through platforms like BRICS and the G20.
For Africa, this is not a peripheral development. It is, in many ways, a homecoming.
While
BRICS, and the New Development
Whatever else is debated about the grouping's trajectory, this alternative source of capital has given African finance ministries a genuine second option for the first time in a generation, as well as bargaining power in international relations.
While challenges remain, the broader trajectory of BRICS cooperation is clear and consequential. As BRICS continues to evolve as a platform for Global
Since its founding, the BRICS cooperation mechanism has grown into an important platform for the Global
