As rising geopolitical friction, unilateral power grabs and protectionist policies reshape the global order, the BRICS bloc of emerging economies has emerged as an increasingly critical platform for delivering alternative, inclusive solutions to global challenges, according to leading South African scholars and policymakers.
Ari Sitas, emeritus professor at the University of Cape Town and former chair of the South African BRICS Think Tank, argues that the bloc holds far more global relevance today than it did at its founding. The growing spread of unilateral decision-making driven by major power interests, he says, has created an urgent need for BRICS to act as a balanced counterweight to unaccountable global power dynamics.
“BRICS is relevant more than it started because it has to provide a counterweight to random decisions that are taken based on power in the world now. It owes the developing world a protective umbrella from the madness that is happening to the rest of the world,” Sitas explained. He added that BRICS must maintain its commitment to cross-country tolerance as it continues to grow, while serving as a counterpoint to destabilizing trends in existing global systems. Beyond geopolitical balancing, Sitas noted that the bloc is already reshaping global economic structures, redefining how knowledge and scientific research are produced across the world, and advancing collective advocacy for lasting global peace. He also pushed back against early skepticism of the bloc: when BRICS was first established, some Western commentators predicted it would collapse within its first year, or dismissed its formation as a misguided idea. Instead, Sitas pointed out, the bloc has not only survived but thrived, expanding its membership to incorporate more emerging economies from the Global South.
Cecil Masoka, director for Europe and the Gulf States at South Africa’s Department of Science, Technology and Innovation, highlighted the tangible, on-the-ground benefits BRICS cooperation has delivered to his country through targeted bilateral collaboration across member states. Masoka emphasized that progress across the bloc’s priority areas, particularly in science, technology and innovation, becomes clearly visible when examining the concrete outcomes of its coordinated working groups.
South Africa lacks the financial resources to develop the large-scale, cutting-edge research infrastructure that major BRICS members including China and Russia have built, but Masoka explained that bloc-wide cooperation has closed this critical gap. “The bilateral relations among BRICS members have allowed us to send our students to access these research infrastructures and undertake research in cutting-edge technologies with people from different countries,” he said. When these South African students return home after training in BRICS member states such as China, they bring back valuable expertise that drives productive domestic development. Beyond science and technology, Masoka added that the bloc’s trade and industry working groups have delivered measurable gains, boosting South African exports to other BRICS markets, most notably China.
Rasigan Maharajh, chief director of the Institute for Economic Research on Innovation at South Africa’s Tshwane University of Technology, framed BRICS’ work as a modern extension of the South-South solidarity movement that emerged from the 1955 Bandung Conference. Today, Maharajh noted, BRICS and its expanded BRICS+ framework have grown into one of the world’s leading platforms for addressing all dimensions of global transformation — from political and economic progress to social and ecological action.
Maharajh argued that expanding productive capacity, technical skills and institutional capabilities across emerging economies is an essential step to redressing the deep material inequalities that shape global quality of life. He drew a clear contrast between BRICS’ development-focused agenda and the priorities of Western blocs such as NATO, which recently agreed to require member states to allocate 5 percent of their gross domestic product to military spending. Instead of pouring resources into military expansion, Maharajh said, BRICS should prioritize sustained investment in science and technology development for shared global progress.
For South Africa, the benefits of BRICS institutional development are already clear: the bloc’s created bodies including the Contingent Reserve Arrangement and the New Development Bank, which has provided financing for a cross-border water infrastructure project with neighboring Lesotho to address South Africa’s chronic water scarcity challenges.