By G. Madaraka Nyerere
📧 madaraka.nyerere@gmail.com
BRICS — the economic and political alliance originally formed by Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa — is growing. Indonesia has recently joined as a full member, while Nigeria and Uganda have been welcomed as partner countries.
For decades, traditional global institutions like the IMF and World Bank have enforced rules that often favour wealthier nations. In contrast, BRICS presents an opportunity for developing nations to rethink and potentially reshape their role in the global economy.
Wealthier nations—particularly the United States and other G7 countries—dominate the policy and funding decisions of the IMF and World Bank, since voting power is tied to a country’s economic strength. All African countries combined hold just 5 percent of the vote, while the U.S. alone controls over 15 percent.
Loans from these institutions often come with conditions that favour private businesses but undermine public services. These prescriptions don’t always lead to meaningful economic progress. Ghana, for example, has been receiving IMF loans since the late 1960s, yet it has faced near economic collapse in recent years.
The BRICS alliance presents compelling alternatives. Its New Development Bank (NDB) provides loans without the usual strings attached and, importantly, promotes trade within the BRICS bloc using local currencies — a move that helps cushion developing countries from the harmful effects of currency devaluations in a US dollar-dominated global economy.
The NDB focuses on funding infrastructure and sustainable development projects and pledges to negotiate loan terms that are mutually acceptable to both the NDB and borrowers. That’s welcome news — something rarely seen with traditional lenders.
The downside is that efforts to promote local currencies are viewed by the United States as a challenge to the dominance of the US dollar in global trade, triggering retaliatory tariffs against BRICS countries.
BRICS now accounts for 44 percent of global economic output and 56 percent of the world’s population. This gives the alliance substantial bargaining power in international negotiations — especially on trade or for developing countries that remain weak when acting alone.
It stands as a promising alternative to the current imbalanced system, where the interests of developing nations have long been sidelined by an exclusive club of powerful countries and the institutions they control, which serve the welfare of the global majority’s margins.
BRICS creates space for the developing world to pursue a different growth path — one that could finally yield real economic benefits that neither been out of reach or only benefited a privileged few.
Growing pains are to be expected, and BRICS is no magic wand. But it offers genuine recognition that internal frictions are likely to be resolved with time.
It remains, above all, a great opportunity for developing countries to break free from the lopsided legacy of existing global financial and development institutions — and to move toward a fairer, more enabling future.
