Ml Muhammad Bham | mbham@radioislam.co.za
13 June 2023 | 18:00 CAT
2 min read

Photo Credit: teleSUR English

In August, all eyes will be on South Africa as it hosts the 15^th BRICS Summit if the headache of what to do with Russia’s Vladimir Putin is addressed by asking China instead to host this year’s BRICS.

Dr Sizo Nkala, a Research Fellow at the University of Johannesburg’s Centre for Africa-China Studies, wrote an opinion piece stating that the upcoming BRICS summit could potentially accelerate the creation of a new world order.

Speaking to Radio Islam International, Dr Nkala said that Argentina and Iran are likely to join after submitting formal documentation to join the group.

These two countries have immense geostrategic value in terms of their geopolitical location or geostrategic location and the resources they possess, such as the substantial oil reserves, the sizeable economies they control, and their significant populations.

These two countries bring to BRICS immense strategic value.

Beyond adding new members to BRICS, the issues to be discussed at BRICS include mobilising global issues like the dollarisation, the reform of global institutions like the IMF, the World Bank and the UN Security Council and the current Russia-Ukraine war. All these issues and BRICS pronunciation will likely affect the global order in the future.

BRICS was created in 2009 by emerging markets or emerging economies, initially comprising four countries – Brazil, Russia, India, and China. South Africa was added to the group in 2010 and attended its first summit in 2011.

It was formed upon the realisation that the global order or the global system, especially the financial system, the international financial system, and the international trade system, wasn’t working strictly to the advantage of the global South. It wasn’t very objective towards the global North and industrialised countries, and that’s when BRICS was formed.

BRICS was formed to reform the international system to become equitable, just and fair, especially towards the global South countries, particularly Africa, Asia and Latin America.

At present, BRICS doesn’t have a hard and fast formula or criteria for determining who becomes a member. Instead, discussions held by the BRICS members and their preferences at the time of the country’s economic development level, the country’s geostrategic value or location would count more in determining who becomes a member of the BRICS.

Listen to the full interview with Sulaimaan Ravat on Sabahul Muslim here.