• South Africa’s Durban is set to host the 15th BRICS Summit in August this year.

• South Africa took over the presidency of the five-nation bloc from China on January 1 this year.

• This is the third time South Africa takes the reins of the presidency of BRICS for a year. 

• South Africa’s theme for its Presidency is: “Ensuring decent work, dignity and respect for all”.

The theme will focus on:

i) Building sustainable enterprises, including new forms of employment and increasing productivity. 

ii) Promoting labour rights and decreasing decent work deficits in the context of the recovery. 

iii) Universal social protection and ensuring minimum basic income.

iv) Promoting decent work by closing skills gaps in the informal economy.

• South African Department of Employment and Labour is gearing itself to host the first in a series of meetings of the BRICS countries’ Employment Working Group (EWG) in February.

• The BRICS Research Network Forum will also meet simultaneously.

• Social security issues will be on top of the agenda at the meeting.

• This series of EWG and Research Network Forum meetings will culminate with the EWG Labour and Employment Ministers Meeting in September 2023.

• In a drive to ensure the support of global initiatives for a human-centered recovery from the COVID-19 crisis, South Africa has also invited countries such as Botswana, Eswatini, Malawi, Namibia and Zimbabwe. The African Union has also been invited.

The BRICS nations

• The BRICS nations or Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa form the five key pillars of south-south cooperation and are the representative voice of emerging markets and developing countries in the global forums such as the G20.

• The BRICS represent 41 per cent of the world population, 29 per cent of the global surface area and account for over 24 per cent of the global GDP.

• The acronym BRIC was first used in 2001 by Goldman Sachs in their Global Economics Paper, ‘The World Needs Better Economic BRICs’ on the basis of econometric analyses projecting that the four economies would individually and collectively occupy far greater economic space and would be amongst the world’s largest economies in the next 50 years or so.

• The leaders of BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) countries met for the first time in St. Petersburg, Russia, on the margins of the G8 Outreach Summit in July 2006. Shortly afterwards, in September 2006, the group was formalised as BRIC during the First BRIC Foreign Ministers’ Meeting, which met on the sidelines of the General Debate of the UN Assembly in New York City.

• After a series of high level meetings, the first BRIC summit was held in Yekaterinburg, Russia on June 16, 2009.

• It was agreed to expand BRIC into BRICS with the inclusion of South Africa at the BRIC Foreign Ministers meeting in New York in September 2010. Accordingly, South Africa attended the third BRICS Summit in Sanya on April 14, 2011. 

• In 2014, the BRICS nations established the New Development Bank (NDB). It has an initial authorised capital of $100 billion and initial subscribed capital of $50 billion of which $10 billion is paid-in capital.

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