Ethiopia applied to join the BRICS

By Paul Jouvenet, legal expert and essayist – Eurasia Business News, July 1, 2023

Addis Abeba, capital city of Ethiopia.

Ethiopia has officially applied to join the BRICS group, Foreign Ministry spokesman Meles Alem said.

« We expect the BRICS countries to respond positively to our request ” he said, quoted by ENA, the Ethiopian news agency.

Noting that Ethiopia has been a member and founder of many international institutions, the diplomat said his country will continue to work with international institutions that can protect its interests. The Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, has been home to the headquarters of the African Union since 1963 and that of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, established in 1958. Ethiopia’s entry into the BRICS will greatly strengthen the alliance’s influence on the continent, as South Africa is already a member.

With 123 million inhabitants, Ethiopia is the^2nd most populous country in Africa after Nigeria. The poverty rate was 30.8% in 2015, and Ethiopia is 175th^{out of} 191 on the Human Development Index. Agriculture remains the socio-economic pillar of the country, based on coffee, pulses, teff, potatoes and sugar cane. It accounts for 32% of GDP, 87% of exports and 65% of employment.

Earlier, Algeria, Egypt and Bangladesh sent an official application for BRICS membership. In late May, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said his country wanted to be part of the association. The current members of the BRICS are Russia, India, China, Brazil and South Africa.

On June 20, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said China supports BRICS expansion for the benefit of like-minded countries.

The BRICS summit will be held from August 22 to 24 in Johannesburg. The official representative of the South African president, Vincent Maguigna, said at a press conference that in the very near future, President Cyril Ramaphosa will complete consultations with the leaders of the BRICS member countries on the details of the summit. The BRICS are expected to decide at this summit whether to admit new members and define what criteria they should meet. Iran, Algeria, Saudi Arabia and now Ethiopia are seeking to join this alternative alliance at the G7.

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The acronym BRICS, derived from the initial letters of the names of the group’s members, was created in December 2010, when South Africa joined the organization that was previously known as BRIC. The aim of the group, set up at the initiative of Russia in 2006, is to strengthen overall cooperation between Member States. China held the BRICS presidency in 2022. It has passed the baton to South Africa for the year 2023.

The 2023 summit will mark the first face-to-face meeting of BRICS leaders since 2019, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The venue for the summit has not yet been confirmed, but it will be held in one of South Africa’s four largest cities – Johannesburg, Durban, Cape Town or Pretoria.

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In early June a meeting of the “Friends of BRICS” took place in Cape Town with a meeting of the foreign ministers of the member states. The five top diplomats of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) met with ministers and senior officials from ten states of the global South, which usually includes the developing countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America. The BRICS want to deepen ties and position their group as a counterweight to the West on the international stage.

The meetings held in South Africa in early June showed the bloc’s desire to establish itself as a serious economic and political force on the international stage, able to reshape geopolitics. This is signaled by the potential expansion of the association and the project of a single currency that would help the members of the group protect their economic interaction from Western sanctions. Due to the growing economic and political confrontation between China and the United States (China is the most economically powerful member of the BRICS), the potential expansion of the BRICS may be perceived in the West as an attempt to create a counterbalance to the influence of the United States and the European Union. Laster year, during its presidency of the BRICS, China began to actively promote the idea of expanding the bloc to new countries.

BRICS countries are working on the issue of creating a new international currency based on the currencies of BRICS member states, which can become a new reserve currency, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at the June 2022 summit in Beijing.

The BRICS countries aims at reducing their dependence on the US dollar and to mitigate US influence over their economies. Some proposals put forward by BRICS countries include using their currencies as reserve currencies, in the SDR basket, or constructing a new supranational currency based on gold and commodities. The fundamental reason for developing an SDR-like basket currency for BRICS nations is to address the US dollar hegemony and build their sphere of influence and unit of currency within that sphere.

Since 2010, the BRICS have brought together Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. All these countries are gold producers.

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© Copyright 2023 – Paul Jouvenet, legal expert and essayist.