Thursday, May 1, 2025

If BRICS bills itself as an anti-American alliance , it’s not worth Botswana’s membership

Former chairman of Goldman Sachs’s Asset management department , Jim O’Neill coined the BRIC  moniker to posit that Brazil , Russia , India and China were  emerging  and fast growing economies that held great promise for the future. He even believed  that the BRICs could trigger a shift in global power.  It is instructive that in devising his economic theory, he  did not have South Africa (SA)  in that  group because its economy was way too small. To date SA is still the country with smallest economy in  BRICS until perhaps other members join as agreed in 2024.

It was only at  China’s behest  that  the Southern African nation became a member of  the BRICS alliance. In  China’s  calculation,  South Africa’s membership would serve its ongoing expansionist forays into Africa.  

There's more to this story

But to keep reading, we need you to subscribe.

Investigative journalism is an indispensable part of a healthy society, but it's also expensive to produce. We are reliant on subscriptions to fund our work, and while you can enjoy most of our stories for free, a small number of premium features are reserved for subscribers.

You can subscribe for one week, a month or a full year - the choice is yours.

Save 77% on an annual subscription. Click here to find out how.

Existing subscribers can log in to keep reading here.

RELATED STORIES

Read this week's paper