The 2025 BRICS Summit in Rio de Janeiro marked a pivotal moment in the evolving global geopolitical landscape, as the countries of the Global South, led by the African countries, seek to reposition themselves within a shifting international order.
Africa’s presence at the summit, represented by five key players including Egypt and Ethiopia as new members, reflects a growing strategic reliance on the BRICS group of nations as a multipolar alternative. However, this engagement is not without its challenges, given the internal divisions and conflicting national priorities among the African states.
The Rio summit exposed a critical imbalance within the BRICS in terms of its ambitious expansion to take in more members and its weak institutional capacity. While Africa’s active participation signals a more mature and assertive vision for the group’s global partnerships, translating this symbolic presence into tangible developmental gains remains contingent on the group’s ability to evolve effective mechanisms.
Only through institutional reform and genuine responsiveness to Africa’s priorities can the BRICS offer a credible alternative to traditional international financial and governance structures.
The summit came at a sensitive moment amid rapid shifts in global geopolitics, escalating East-West polarisation, and eroding trust in traditional international institutions. It followed the bloc’s largest expansion to date, giving it a foundational character as the group sought to navigate its own internal diversity and emerging geopolitical tensions.
Its timing underscored the Global South’s drive to reshape the international order in the face of deepening crises and institutional inertia, particularly on the part of bodies like the UN Security Council and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Africa’s strong presence in the BRICS has sent a collective message demanding more equitable partnerships and greater agency in shaping the evolving frameworks of global governance.
Amid overlapping economic and security crises, from the war on Gaza to escalating conflicts in Sudan and Niger, the summit took on added strategic relevance. The convergence of African and Asian powers in the BRICS at this juncture highlights a shift in collective security thinking, especially amid declining confidence in traditional Western mediation.
The summit’s timing also coincided with Angola’s presidency of the African Union (AU) and the 60th anniversary of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), giving Africa a vital platform to reassert its developmental and sovereign priorities. With key Red Sea stakeholders also at the table, the summit signalled the need for South-South alliances capable of managing regional tensions through shared responsibility and strategic autonomy.
The prominent African presence at the summit was marked by the participation of five countries representing diverse regions of the continent and signalling a strategic shift in Africa’s perception of its global role. South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Angola, and Nigeria each approached the summit with national and regional agendas, seeking to maximise the benefits of engaging with a multipolar platform of this type.
South Africa played a pivotal role as the bloc’s longest-standing African member, while Egypt and Ethiopia reflected North and East Africa’s ambition to leverage the BRICS as a strategic tool for development and diplomacy. Angola, representing the AU, added an institutional dimension to Africa’s presence, while Nigeria’s participation hinted at a broader West African engagement with the expanding bloc.
While symbolically significant, the participation of the African countries in the summit also revealed key challenges in internal coordination. Despite the diversity of its member states, a unified African position within the bloc remains elusive, limiting the continent’s collective influence. Variations in the level of engagement, such as the absence of some heads of state from the summit, highlight divergent priorities and expectations.
Ethiopia stood out for its proactive diplomatic engagement and strategic messaging. However, the lack of consensus among the African countries over who should represent the continent on the UN Security Council, despite the BRICS supporting bids from Brazil and India, exposed persistent internal fractures.
This underscores the fact that representation alone is insufficient: real influence will require a cohesive African front capable of translating institutional presence into tangible outcomes.
RESHAPING: Africa’s participation in the summit was driven by an increasing desire to reshape its economic and financial relations within a more just and inclusive global system.
The continent’s top priorities centred on critical issues such as tackling mounting debt and creating flexible financing mechanisms through the New Development Bank, away from the restrictive conditions of Western institutions.
The African countries also sought stronger support for cross-border infrastructure projects, which suffer from chronic funding gaps, linking them to the AU’s Agenda 2063 to promote sustainable development. Additionally, there was a call for innovative financing models, the greater use of local currencies in trade, and enhanced food security through agricultural technology and partnerships with countries like China and Brazil, which have extensive expertise of agricultural transformation.
The African countries also emphasised the urgent need to reform the global financial system to secure fairer representation within its institutions, particularly given the dominance of the dollar and its destabilising impact on the developing economies. They called for stronger support in international forums, whether on climate justice, the reform of the UN Security Council, technology transfer, or dismantling structural inequality.
The continent’s broad presence at the summit, along with the participation of the AU Chair, created a strategic opportunity to unify African positions and build a coordinated negotiating front within the BRICS. However, the effectiveness of this presence ultimately depends on Africa’s ability to overcome its internal divisions and translate symbolic membership into real institutional influence that serves its long-term interests in the evolving global order.
Despite the promising prospects of Africa’s partnership with the BRICS, this relationship is still fraught with structural and geopolitical challenges shaped by both international pressures and domestic vulnerabilities. Africa’s alignment with the BRICS has triggered repeated threats from the Western powers, particularly the US under President Donald Trump, which has warned of sanctions and trade barriers targeting countries engaging with what it calls “anti-American” policies.
At the same time, the BRICS itself suffers from internal imbalances, with major powers dominating the agenda while African priorities remain marginalised. The absence of mechanisms to ensure equitable representation and benefit-sharing within institutions such as the New Development Bank raises concerns about the group’s ability to serve as a fair and inclusive platform for Africa’s development needs.
The lack of a unified African vision within the BRICS also weakens the continent’s collective bargaining power, as divergent national interests dilute the possibility of coordinated action. Africa’s economic fragility, marked by limited industrial capacity, reliance on raw materials, and vulnerability to global market shifts, makes the continent especially susceptible to the financial reverberations of efforts to de-dollarise and restructure the global monetary order.
Western apprehension towards this realignment is already manifesting in financial pressures and political manoeuvering, placing the African states in a precarious position between South-South cooperation and longstanding Western alliances. This dual pressure risks fragmenting the African consensus on the BRICS and undermining the continent’s potential to shape a multipolar world order that better reflects its strategic interests.
The BRICS Summit in Rio de Janeiro marked a pivotal moment in Africa’s repositioning within the global order, reflecting a growing awareness among African nations of the need for equitable partnerships within the Global South as a pathway to developmental independence. However, translating this awareness into tangible gains requires stronger African coordination, a unified vision, and effective negotiation mechanisms.
The summit was thus not merely a symbolic event for Africa, but also an early test of the continent’s ability to evolve into a meaningful actor within post-Western global alliances.
The writer is a researcher in African affairs.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 17 July, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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