South African President Cyril Ramaphosa yesterday joined his BRICS counterparts for a virtual leaders’ summit, aiming to advance the bloc’s vision for stronger South-South cooperation and reworked global governance structures.

The summit, chaired by Brazil’s President, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, built on the outcomes of a July meeting in Rio de Janeiro, where BRICS leaders emphasised the need for a united approach among developing countries in tackling economic and systemic global challenges.

Key topics on the agenda included the global economic outlook, reform of multilateral institutions, and opportunities for BRICS states to collaborate more effectively in areas such as trade, development, and security. The summit formed part of the ongoing effort to position BRICS as a voice for non-Western economies in a shifting geopolitical environment.

The meeting comes amidst heightened tensions between the United States and the BRICS grouping and follows just a week after a high-profile summit in China that included meetings between the leaders of China, India, and Russia.

Mr Ramaphosa told the summit that the world was facing seismic shifts in re-ordering the global economy and that there was a shift from a unipolar to a multi-polar world order marked by a spike in global tensions. In a sharp rebuke of the US Mr Ramaphosa said that unilateral tariff actions were leading to an increasingly protectionist global environment which posed great hardship and danger for what he termed the global south.

These actions were causing global disruption and chaos, he said. The uncertainty of the new trading regime, Mr Ramaphosa said, was already negatively affecting employment levels in South Africa and were an obstacle to South Africa’s economic growth. South Africa, he said, therefore supported BRICS initiatives that would strengthen and expand trade. He further called for reform to the United Nations and that BRICS should play a leading role in advocating for the reform of multilateral institutions.

Mr Ramaphosa concluded that a BRICS economic partnership strategy could unlock tangible benefits for South Africa and that this would send a clear message to the world that BRICS members were interested in mutually beneficial trade centred around cooperation and not around coercion.