The invitation confirms Egypt’s importance as a regional Arab and African power and its political and economic weight with its strategic location, emerging market, and  population that nears 110 million.

It is also a message of confidence from this important coalition that Egypt is a partner worth doing business with, inviting it together with five other key nations to join out of a long list of candidates. Membership in the group will help promote investment and export opportunities and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) flows.

While such benefits will gradually come into effect, helping the economy to deal with challenges that mounted following the Covid-19 epidemic and the Russia-Ukraine war, there is no question that Egypt’s decision to join BRICS confirms its policy of diversifying its alliances, and taking every possible route to improving the economy and providing jobs for millions of young Egyptians.

President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi immediately welcomed the invitation, which is the culmination of eight years of intensive diplomatic efforts to build stronger ties with BRICS’ five founding members: China, Russia, India, South Africa and Brazil. “We appreciate the confidence of all BRICS member states with whom we share robust relations. We look forward to cooperating and coordinating with them, and with the other countries invited to join the bloc, to achieve its goals towards strengthening economic cooperation among us and to raise the voice of the Global South,” the president said following the announcement.

Along with Egypt, BRICS leaders invited Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Iran, Ethiopia, and Argentina as new members of the group. This will increase the bloc’s share of global GDP to nearly 30 per cent, compared to its current 26 per cent. The inclusion of Saudi Arabia, Iran and the UAE also means that BRICS members control 43 per cent of global oil production, up from 20 per cent currently, representing nearly 46 per cent of the world’s population. The chance of doing business with such a huge market, exchanging technology and exports, perhaps in local currencies, is a promising opportunity indeed.

According to Finance Minister Mohamed Mait, this additional positive step helps support the means of economic cooperation and deepen trade exchange between Egypt and the member states of BRICS, which is one of the most important economic blocs in the world. The diversity of the productive and commodity structure of exports achieves the integration of supply chains and imports among the BRICS countries.

The alternative to deal in national currencies between BRICS member states also helps Egypt rationalise the basket of currencies spent to pay the import bill and thus relieve pressure on the state’s budget, which bears a heavy burden to secure its basic needs of wheat and fuel in the wake of the outbreak of war between Russia and Ukraine, and global inflation. Both developments resulted in an unprecedented hike in the prices of goods and services.

Joining the economic alliance will also help the government achieve its goal in promoting the private sector’s role and increase its contribution to the national economy to 65 per cent in the next few years. The government will continue to improve the investment environment to make it more attractive for business with BRICS members through developing the relevant legislative frameworks, removing bureaucratic obstacles, and facilitating procedures related to new business registration.

Egypt’s interest in developing ties with BRICS had been ongoing for years, and the first step before becoming a full member was joining the alliance’s $100 billion multilateral lender, the New Development Bank (NDB), in April, allowing Egypt to access finance for development projects.

Joining BRICS does not mean that Egypt is taking sides in the tensions rising on the global stage between the United States and both China and Russia, or wants to reduce its cooperation with other international financial institutions that have long supported the Egyptian economy. Cairo is and will remain keen to maintain its close and strategic relations with the United States, which are nearing half a century.

However, the growing weight and influence of the Chinese economy on the world level cannot be denied, and the United States is a top trading partner with Beijing, along with the European Union. Egypt is entitled to building strong ties with all growing and influential world economies in the interest of its own economy.

The historic close relations between Egypt and all founding BRICS members, notably Russia, China and India, is yet another reason to be confident that the positive results of joining this alliance will be felt before too long. The ambition to build a long trade route between Cairo and Cape Town too could also start to materialise, strengthening Egypt’s ties with South Africa and the rest of the continent. Despite the long distance separating the two countries, there already are thriving political and economic relations with Brazil. As soon as the current Brazilian President, Lula da Silva, took office, his first foreign trip was to Sharm El-Sheikh to attend the COP-27 summit and meet with President Al-Sisi.

By joining BRICS, Egypt also hopes that the coalition will support the Egyptian initiative for sustainable debt alliance which it proposed this year to regulate sustainable debt transactions and lift debt burdens for emerging markets. Without a doubt, such an initiative would not only help Egypt, but also many African nations that we hope to see as partners in BRICs.

* A version of this article appears in print in the 31 August, 2023 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly