World
Amid Rising Geopolitical Challenges India Prioritizing Global South Under its BRICS Leadership
By Kestér Kenn Klomegâh
By rotational procedures and consensus adopted in Brazil in December, India has taken over the BRICS+ presidency for 2026, underscoring its highly-enriching membership and gracious opportunity to deepen the intergovernmental association as a leading geopolitical force in the Global South. Brazil took over the BRICS presidency from Russia on January 1, 2025. Following its expansion, BRICS+ currently comprises ten countries: Brazil, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Iran, Russia, South Africa and the United Arab Emirates.
Historically, its conceptual origins were articulated by Russian foreign minister Yevgeny Primakov in 1998, and can be traced to series of informal forums and dialogue groups such as RIC (Russia, India, and China) and IBSA (India, Brazil, and South Africa). In addition to that significant aspect of its history, BRIC was originally a term coined by British economist Jim O’Neill, and later championed by his employer Goldman Sachs in 2001, to designate a group of emerging markets.
The bloc’s inaugural summit was held in 2009 (Yekaterinburg summit) and featured the founding countries of Brazil, Russia, India, and China. These four founding members adopted the acronym BRIC and formed an informal diplomatic club where their governments could meet annually at formal summits and coordinate multilateral policies. The following year, South Africa officially became a member after it was formally invited and supported by China, and unreservedly backed by India and Russia.
South Africa joined the organization in September 2010, which was then renamed BRICS, and attended the third summit in 2011 as a full member. The biggest expansion witnessed Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, and the United Arab Emirates attending the first summit as member states in 2024 in Kazan, the autonomous Republic of Tatarstan, part of the Russian Federation. Later on, Indonesia officially joined in early 2025, becoming the first Southeast Asian member. The acronym BRICS+ or BRICS Plus has been informally used to reflect new membership since 2024.
On 24 October 2024, an additional 13 countries, namely Algeria, Belarus, Bolivia, Cuba, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, Turkey, Uganda, Uzbekistan and Vietnam, were invited to participate as “partner countries”. The partner status would allow these countries to engage with and benefit from BRICS initiatives. It is still unclear whether the countries in this tier have received official membership invitations. But there is the high possibility to ascend the association as full-fledged members in future.
Persistent Multiple Differences
Now as India takes on the helm of BRICS+, experts and research analysts are showing deep interest and are discussing possibilities of multilateral cooperation, existing challenges and identifying diverse priorities, the strength and weaknesses of BRICS+. On a more negative note, multiple contradictions keep piling up among the group, including questions about the future of BRICS as anything other than an ineffective growing talk-shop market.
The biggest obstacle being political divergencies and economic development perceptions. Cultures are distinctive different among the members of this informal BRICS+ association, while all are consistently advocating for wholesale reforms, especially of the United Nations Security Council, and multinational financial institution such as the World Bank (WB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF). Some the members have been adamant to undertake internal reforms at their own state institutions.
As a founding member of BRICS, India plans to find a more suitable path for balancing its non-aligned policy, forge new directions for the development of the Global South under its BRICS+ presidency, while emphasizing trends on the global economic landscape. Arguably, India will definitely act with precision. India is most likely to be non-critical, and moreso with an insight understanding that, not antagonism, but rather ‘cooperation’ must be the underlying basic principle of a multipolar environment.
India’s Rotating BRICS Presidency
Leaders’ meetings (or leaders’ summits) are held once a year on a rotating basis. BRICS has neither a permanent seat nor secretariat. A number of ministerial meetings, for example, between foreign ministers, finance ministers, central bank governors, trade ministers and energy ministers in the country which is presiding BRICS+ association.
Speaking at the BRICS summit back in 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has assertively said that “reform of institutions of global governance … has been on the BRICS agenda since its inception.”
Later, prior to the Kazan summit, Prime Minister Modi explicitly stated that BRICS was never meant to be against anyone or be anti-western, and that it is only non-western. At the Kazan summit, Prime Minister Modi further stated: “We must be careful to ensure that this organization does not acquire the image of one that is trying to replace global institutions”.
At the 17th BRICS Summit held in Rio de Janeiro on 7 July 2025, Prime Minister Modi stated that India would give a “new form” to the BRICS grouping during its presidency in 2026.
Prime Minister Modi proposed redefining BRICS as “Building Resilience and Innovation for Cooperation and Sustainability” and emphasized a people-centric approach, drawing parallels with India’s G-20 presidency where the Global South was prioritized.
Prime Minister Modi affirmed that India would advance BRICS with a focus on “humanity first” highlighting the need for joint global efforts to address common challenges such as pandemics and climate change.
Prime Minister Modi also called for urgent reform of global institutions to reflect the realities of the 21st century, emphasizing greater representation for the Global South and criticizing outdated structures like the UN Security Council and World Trade Organization.
Clarifying further and clearly BRICS+ position: In a briefing in October 2024, Russian Foreign Ministry stated, on its website, that “BRICS framework is non-confrontational and constructive” and that “it is a viable alternative to a world living by someone else’s, alien rules” and by this functional definition, it reinforces BRICS role in the world. BRICS members has the opportunity to mutually deal with any country in the world. It is not prohibited to forge amicable relations with United States and in Europe.
President Putin quoted Prime Minister Narendra Modi in saying that “BRICS is not anti-western but simply non-western” and even suggested that BRICS countries could be a part of the Ukraine peace process.
There are other classical analysis. For instance, Joseph Nye wrote in January 2025 that BRICS, “as a means of escaping diplomatic isolation, it is certainly useful to Russia” and that the same goes for Iran. Nevertheless, political expert Nye explained that the expansion of the BRICS could bring in more “intra-organizational rivalries” which is limiting the groups’ effectiveness. Yet, BRICS consolidation has turned the group into a potent negotiation force that now challenges Washington’s geopolitical and economic goals.
Despite frequent criticisms against Donald Trump, most of BRICS members are pursuing relations with United States, with Kremlin appointing Chief Executive Officer of Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) Kirill Dmitriev as the Special Representative of the Russian President for Economic Cooperation with Foreign Countries. Since his appointment, returning U.S. business to Russia’s market forms the primary focus in the United States. Russian President Vladimir Putin has tasked him to promote business dialogue between the two countries, and further to negotiate for the return of U.S. business enterprises. Without much doubts, similar trends are not difficult to find as India, Ethiopia and South Africa fix eyes on identifying pragmatic prospects for economic cooperation, further to earn significant revenue from trade, and also including pathways to sustain the huge Diaspora’s financial remittances from the United States.
BRICS+ Financial Architecture
The group is dominated by China, which has the largest share of the group’s GDP, accounting to about 70% of the organization total. The financial architecture of BRICS is made of the New Development Bank (NDB) and the Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA). These components were signed into a treaty in 2014 and became active in 2015. The New Development Bank (NDB), formally referred to as the BRICS Development Bank, is a multilateral development bank operated by the five BRICS states.
The bank’s primary focus of lending is infrastructure projects with authorized lending of up to $34 billion annually. South Africa hosts the African headquarters of the bank. The bank has a starting capital of $50 billion, with wealth increased to $100 billion over time. Records show Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa initially contributed $10 billion each to bring the total to $50 billion. As of 2020, it had 53 projects underway worth around $15 billion. By 2024 the bank had approved more than $32 billion for 96 projects. In 2021, Bangladesh, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Uruguay joined the NDB.
Future of BRICS+ in Geopolitical World
Last year, several countries began working within the BRICS framework, and many states are planning to join this association. In practical terms, BRICS needs to increase its practical impact of its partnership on the level of qualitative development, not just organizational symbolism and public rhetoric as it has been during the past few years. Time has come to avoid excessive bureaucracy and avoid any undesirable rigid attachment to an organizational structure. BRICS has to enhance its economic potential, develop appropriate mechanisms for financial, trade, and economic cooperation.
With India’s presidency in 2026, which is estimated to be a comprehensive and promising eventful year for BRICS, as India has already outlined its framework of priorities, as it did during its G20 presidency several years ago. In close-coordination with members and partner-states within the BRICS association, India has to ensure the balance of multifaceted interests, and ensure or establish mutual-trust in the multipolar world system. The goal of transforming into a full-fledged international organization must go beyond addressing current geopolitical challenges, the necessity to develop effective ways of engaging in global development to reflect multipolarity.
Since its inception, BRICS has undergone a transformation and has gone through several stages of qualitative change. The organizers are still touting the expansion as part of a plan to build a competing multipolar world order that uses Global South countries to challenge and compete against the western-dominated world order. There is obvious interest in this consensus-based platform, hundreds of economic and political areas for cooperation, and for collaborating including politics, economic development, education, and scientific research. The New Development Bank finances various projects in member countries: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
On January 1, 2024, five new members officially entered BRICS, namely Egypt, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Ethiopia. At a BRICS Summit in Kazan, Russia in October 2024, it was decided to establish a category of BRICS partner countries. The first countries to become partners were Belarus, Bolivia, Kazakhstan, Cuba, Malaysia, Thailand, Uganda and Uzbekistan. The expanded BRICS+ generates 36% of global GDP. That however, according to Economist Intelligence Unit, the collective size of the economies of BRICS+ will overtake G7 by 2045. Today, collectively, BRICS comprises more than a quarter of the global economy and nearly half the world’s population.
By Kestér Kenn Klomegâh
One year after launching a continental initiative designed to make excellence in public governance the foundation of a new drive to transform Africa, LEAD, the Africa CEO Forum’s pan-African leadership programme, takes stock of its first cohort and announces the launch of its second class. Built around a community of senior public decision-makers committed to modernising the state and to the continent’s digital transformation, this new cohort gathers for three days, from 28 to 30 August 2026, on the campus of Mohammed VI Polytechnic University (UM6P) in Rabat, Morocco.
A second cohort that confirms the programme’s durability
For its second class, LEAD brings together 50 fellows, senior public decision-makers engaged in the design and implementation of the continent’s economic and social policies. Over three days, participants take part in collective and collaborative working sessions, peer exchanges and meetings with figures from the public, business and academic spheres, in order to compare their practices and build shared responses to the major challenges of governance.
Speakers include Mehdi Jomaa, former Head of Government of Tunisia, Donald Kaberuka, Managing Partner & Founder, SouthBridge Group, and former President of the African Development Bank, Serge Ekue, President of the West African Development Bank (BOAD), Sanjay Jain, co-creator of India Stack and Director of Digital Public Infrastructure, Gates Foundation, and Mauricio Cardenas, Professor of Professional Practice in Global Leadership, Columbia SIPA, and former Finance Minister of Colombia (2012-2018).
They share their reform experience, their public policy trade-offs and their view of continental priorities. Throughout the programme, the cohort benefits from the dedicated support of Mohammed VI Polytechnic University, Asafo & Co, BOAD, BCG and the African Development Bank, LEAD partners that have chosen to invest in the transformation of African public action.
LEAD, a pan-African community serving public action
Created by the AFRICA CEO FORUM, LEAD is a leadership programme whose ambition is to reposition Africa’s administrative elite as a driver of reform, of performance and of dialogue with all the continent’s stakeholders.
Designed for senior African public decision-makers, LEAD sets out to build a lasting community of public officials able to share their experience, compare their practices and build common solutions to the major economic, technological and institutional transformations under way in Africa. That community is structured around three pillars: modernizing the state, improving public services, and strengthening cooperation between governments, development institutions and private-sector players.
From fellows to alumni: a long-term initiative
Made up of 36 fellows drawn from a range of administrations and institutions and representing 24 countries across the continent, LEAD’s first cohort demonstrated the quality and the potential of this community from its very first year. In less than twelve months, six of its members have taken a significant step forward: two have been appointed ministers, two have moved into strategic positions at the highest level of the state and two have been promoted to chief executive roles. These moves, which account for 16.7% of the first class, show the role LEAD plays as an accelerator of impact within African administrations.
By bringing together a new cohort of fellows every year, each of them joining the LEAD alumni community, the initiative follows a long-term trajectory: in time, to unite several hundred African public decision-makers around a shared culture of transparency, performance and regional cooperation.
A first year devoted to public service and digital public infrastructure
Throughout the year, the fellows devoted their work to strengthening African public action, to make excellence in public governance a central lever of transformation. An awareness campaign, run as part of Africa Public Service Day, brought to light those who, within the continent’s administrations and institutions, are concretely transforming public policy and improving the services offered to citizens.
Members of the cohort also took part in a special round table held in Kigali during the ACF 2026, in order to carry their thinking to a wider community of public and private leaders. That forum reinforced LEAD’s role as a platform for dialogue between the administrative elite and the continent’s economic players. Digital public infrastructure (DPI) formed the main thread of this first year of work.
Discussions covered issues at the heart of the digital sovereignty of African states: digital identity, payments, secure data exchange, interoperability, governance and the protection of citizens. This work examined the conditions under which African states are developing, in some cases, and can develop, in others, shared, open infrastructure robust enough to improve the quality of public services while supporting local innovation and preserving the capacity of public authorities to set the rules of the game.
A white paper to move from consuming technology to creating value
This year of work concludes with the publication, in collaboration with BCG, LEAD’s Knowledge Partner, of a white paper on Africa’s place in the digital economy and in artificial intelligence. With the digital economy still accounting for around 5% of African GDP, against close to 15% worldwide, the paper calls on the continent to shift from a logic of technology consumption to one of value creation.
The white paper identifies three structuring priorities for African public actors:
- Building shared digital infrastructure that serves as the backbone of public services and private innovation.
- Pooling investment in order to reach critical mass and avoid the fragmentation of efforts across the continent.
- Favouring open and interoperable architectures, with trust and governance built in by design, so as to protect citizens while stimulating the entrepreneurial ecosystem.
The white paper is available here to all public decision-makers, technical partners and institutions concerned.
“LEAD’s first cohort confirms a simple conviction: Africa already has the women and men capable of profoundly transforming public action. Our responsibility, either with our partners, is to give them, at pan-African level, a space in which to compare experience, build common solutions and bring forward a new generation of public policy. With this second cohort, we want to accelerate the move from ambition to execution, in particular on digital public infrastructure and artificial intelligence, two decisive issues for sovereignty, for the effectiveness of the state and for value creation across the continent,” says Amir Ben Yahmed, President of the Africa CEO Forum.
By Kestér Kenn Klomegâh
Africa is set to make history as it hosts the World Public Summit for the first time, with Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, welcoming global leaders and changemakers from July 29–30, 2026, for the landmark gathering under the theme “New World: Africa in Shaping a Shared Future.”
The inaugural African edition of the World Public Summit marks a significant milestone in the continent’s growing role in shaping international dialogue on governance, sustainable development, human-centred leadership and global cooperation.
Hosted by the World Peoples Assembly in partnership with African and international organisations, the summit will convene government officials, diplomats, business leaders, academics, journalists, youth representatives, civil society organisations and cultural leaders from across Africa and around the world.
According to Andrey Belyaninov, General Secretary of the World Peoples Assembly, “the Summit is not just a meeting—it is a space for unity. A space where the ‘values that unite us’ come to life: respect for people, openness to the world, responsibility for the future, and a commitment to creation.
“Today, we understand more clearly than ever: the future cannot be built alone. It is born in dialogue, in trust, in the ability to listen to one another and to act together.”
The programme begins on July 29 with a series of high-level roundtables and expert discussions covering Pan-African economic integration, civil society, education, scientific cooperation, cultural diplomacy and humanitarian partnerships.
The opening plenary, “Values, Development and Partnership as the Basis of a Sustainable and Just World,” will explore how African values—including Ubuntu—can help shape a more inclusive and sustainable global future. Discussions will also focus on youth leadership, innovation, civil society, ethical AI, public initiatives and international partnerships.
The summit will also showcase Africa’s creativity and innovation through the “Innovations for the Future” exhibition, the contemporary African art exhibition “Unity,” and the international exhibition “The World Paints Happiness.”
Another featured initiative is “The Zambezi River: Economy, Society, Soul,” an international interdisciplinary project exploring the river’s socioeconomic importance across Angola, Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe, highlighting the shared heritage and development potential of one of Africa’s most important waterways.
The event will conclude with the adoption of the African Communiqué, reflecting the summit’s shared vision for stronger international cooperation, sustainable development and people-centred leadership.
Tsegaye Chama, General Secretary of the Global Black Centre, promised that, “The Summit will be delivered with exceptional distinction, reflecting the magnitude and spirit of the World Peoples Assembly. It embodies a unity that is not transactional, but purposeful and conscious, a unity that shapes new contours for a world that works for all peoples of the World.”
As delegates prepare to arrive in Addis Ababa, anticipation continues to build for what promises to be one of Africa’s most significant international gatherings of 2026—one that will place the continent firmly at the centre of global conversations about the future.
By Adedapo Adesanya
Nigeria regained its position as Africa’s leading destination for equity startup investment in the first half of 2026, raising $214 million in equity financing and a total of $254 million across equity and debt, according to the latest Africa: The Big Deal report.
The report, titled H1 2026: Mapping the Money, showed that Nigeria ranked second on the continent in total funding, behind Egypt, which attracted $327 million, while Kenya and South Africa followed with $126 million and $83 million, respectively.
However, the report noted that Egypt’s top position was largely driven by a single fundraising by electric mobility company Spiro, which secured $327 million, including $270 million in equity and $57 million in debt. Excluding debt financing, Nigeria emerged as Africa’s largest equity funding market in the first six months of the year.
According to the breakdown by Africa: The Big Deal, Nigeria’s equity funding of $214 million was higher than Egypt’s $183 million, while South Africa and Kenya attracted $66 million and $46 million, respectively.
Beyond funding value, Nigeria also led the continent in the number of startups that raised at least $100,000 during the review period, reclaiming the top spot after what the report described as an “underwhelming” second half of 2025.
The publication observed that Nigeria’s fundraising performance has remained relatively stable over the past few years and exceeded the $250 million mark for the first time since 2022, pointing to renewed investor confidence in the country’s startup ecosystem.
It also found that while the Big Four startup markets—Nigeria, Egypt, Kenya and South Africa—continued to dominate Africa’s investment landscape, their combined share of total funding stood at 58 per cent in the first half of 2026.
“Zooming back on the Big Four (110 out of 190 $100k+ deals, i.e. 58%), Nigeria is head and shoulders above its peers, with Egypt and Kenya almost tying, and South Africa in fourth position again,” the report noted.
The report highlighted contrasting performances among the continent’s largest startup ecosystems. While Nigeria and Egypt maintained strong funding momentum, Kenya recorded its weakest funding performance since early 2021 after a strong second half of 2025, and South Africa failed to attract $100 million in funding during the period despite leading the continent a year earlier.
Africa: The Big Deal also noted a broader shift in investor behaviour, with funding increasingly concentrated in larger transactions while early-stage investments continued to decline. According to the publication, the drop in smaller funding rounds reflects growing concerns about limited capital available for early-stage startups across Africa.
