The Global South? It Wants a Multipolar World

Motar is the substance that is utilized in construction processes to glue together bricks and stones, which makes it an appropriate metaphor for what the inter-governmental grouping composed of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) are striving to achieve through the reconfiguration the global economic order. In August 2023, the 15th BRICS Summit held in Johannesburg, South Africa, has established the foundation for the emergence of a multipolar geopolitical and geoeconomic world order. There were more than 42 countries officially expressed an interest in joining the BRICS grouping and the South African BRICS Summit led to the inclusion of additional countries, included Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates (UAE), which major members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

South Africa’s chairing of the BRICS Summit, and the decision to expand its membership during the Johannesburg convening, was a foreign policy victory for President Cyril Ramaphosa. The 2024 newly expanded BRICS formation will have a GDP greater than that of the G7 countries will be home to half of the world’s population. Furthermore, the expansion of BRICS represents a significant shift in geoeconomic terms, given that BRICS countries now account for almost 30% of the global GDP, 46% of the world’s population and 43% of oil production. In this sense, the BRICS formation will be a geopolitical and geoeconomic powerhouse which, through its New Development Bank, will be able to provide lines of credit to its members as well as to other non-members from the Global South. In addition, a number of African countries including Algeria, Cameroon, Egypt, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa are withdrawing their gold reserves from the United States of America, amid concerns about the future stability of the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency. Gold has traditionally been considered a means to maintain value in times of economic turmoil, but the increasing geopolitical tensions and the noticeable shift in geo-economic power has undermined perceptions about the stability of the US economy.

This progressive emergence of BRICS is a direct consequence of the intransigence and inertia of the West, which can be traced to the end of the Cold War in the early 1990’s, to genuinely pursue the reform of the multilateral system, because the status quo was beneficial to its societies. The intervening 30-year period, since the end of the Cold War, witnessed the emergence of a spate of ad hoc formations including the G20, BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which were analogous to bacterial infections skin lesions on the global body politic, and a manifestation of the breakdown and diseased nature of failure of the post-Cold War US-dominated multilateral system. BRICS is viewed by countries from the Global South as an initial soothing ointment for the bacterial infection that is the failure and breakdown of the geopolitical system.

The extractive relationship that former European colonial powers have had with African countries, notably France’s continuing manipulative and extractive relationship with fourteen West and Central African countries, is now facing a backlash evident in the recent military coups in Gabon and Niger. The IMF, World Bank and WTO maintained this colonial paternalistic, hegemonic, and unequal relationship with the Global South in terms of the harsh conditionalities and heavy interest rates on debt which subjected countries to the “debt trap” from which many African countries are struggling to extract themselves. This fact combined with the reality that US-led western countries have stubbornly refused to allow international financial institutions to be reformed, was viewed as a statement of intent to continue to shut it out Asia, Africa and Latin America from equal access to the global economic order.

BRICS leaders also committed to support Africa’s industrialization and to enable the continent to grow its manufacturing sector and promote a diversification of the continent’s economies, including the trade in local currencies, to leverage the African Continental Free Trade Area (ACFTA).

The developments at the BRICS Summit in South Africa suggests that the grouping will continue to grow and will function as an embryonic building block and gradually create a multipolar world order. The West should seek to engage with BRICS through dialogue about the nature of the future global multilateral system, rather than pursue disruptive and efforts to sabotage the economic block. In September 2022, President Biden states that the UN Security Council should be reformed to include the permanent presence of African countries on the UN Security Council.

One year on it is evident that this was empty rhetoric as there has not been any movement from Washington to catalyze any change. A similar situation replicates itself with regards to International Financial Institutions, given that their reluctance to reform in order to reflect the world as it is in the 21st century has directly contributed and led to the emergence of BRICS as the new viral band in and to the clamor of geopolitical groupies to sign up.

African countries have been arguing and agitating for a transformation of the multilateral system to reflect the realities of the twenty-first century. For the multilateral system to be seen as fair and legitimate by Africa and the rest of the Global South, the geopolitical institutions, such as the UN Security Council, and the geoeconomic institutions, such as the international financial institutions, including the IMF, World Bank and the WTO, these Bretton Woods institutions would have to be fundamentally transformed to create a more inclusive and balanced world order.