BRICS and the Global South’s Assertion

A staff worker stands behind the national flags of Brazil, Russia, China, South Africa and India to tidy the flags before a group photo during the BRICS Summit at the Xiamen International Conference and Exhibition Center in Xiamen, southeastern China’s Fujian Province, China September 4, 2017. REUTERS/Wu Hong/Pool

August 21, 2023

10:00 am - 11:00 am

Zoom Webinar

A webinar jointly hosted by the Quincy Institute and the Brazilian Center for International Relations (CEBRI).

On August 22nd, leaders from the BRICS grouping – Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa – meet for their 15th heads leaders’ summit in Johannesburg, South Africa. The summit comes amidst a changing global landscape, with the United States’ global dominance slipping and the Global South largely asserting nuanced and non-aligned positions on the Ukraine conflict. The prospect of membership expansion is expected to top the summit agenda, with over twenty countries now having applied to join the group. Efforts toward de-dollarization and other potential reforms to the global financial system will also be discussed.

What is the likelihood of BRICS’ expansion, and what signal would that send to the United States and the world? How can the grouping make further gains on development financing, and to what extent will this complement and compete with U.S.-led institutions such as the World Bank? What are other areas for BRICS to achieve concrete results moving forward? Join the Quincy Institute and the Brazilian Center for International Relations (CEBRI) for answers to these questions and more.

The conversation will feature Sarang Shidore, Director of the Global South program at the Quincy Institute, David Monyae, director of the Centre for Africa-China Studies at the University of Johannesburg, and Marta Fernández, Program Director at the BRICS Policy Center. Feliciano de Sá Guimarães, Academic Director and Senior Researcher at CEBRI, will moderate.

A transcript of the webinar can be downloaded here.

Panelists

Sarang Shidore

Sarang Shidore is Director of the Global South program at the Quincy Institute and a senior non-resident fellow at the Council on Strategic Risks. His areas of research and analysis are geopolitical risk, grand strategy, and energy/climate security, with a special emphasis on Asia and the Global South. Sarang has collaborated and published with multiple organizations including the Asian Peace Program, Brookings Institution, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Council on Foreign Relations, Council on Strategic Risks, Oxford Analytica, Paulson Institute, Stimson Center, UK Ministry of Defense, and Woodwell Climate Research Center.

David Monyae

David Monyae is Director for the Centre for Africa-China Studies (CACS) and Associate Professor of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa. He previously served as Section Manager of International Relations Policy Analysis at the South African Parliament, providing strategic management, parliamentary foreign policy formulation, and monitoring and analysis services. Prior to that, David served as Policy Analyst at the Development Bank Southern Africa (DBSA), where he undertook extensive research on Regional Economic Communities (RECS) in Africa.

Marta Fernández

Marta Fernández is Program Director at the BRICS Policy Center and Adjunct Professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro. Her main areas of interest and publications include Post-Colonial and Decolonial Studies, Aesthetics, Race and Gender Relations, South-South Cooperation, and Critical Development Perspectives. She holds a PhD in International Relations from the Institute of International Relations of the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro.

Feliciano de Sá Guimarães (Moderator)

Feliciano de Sá Guimarães is Academic Director and Senior Researcher at the Brazilian Center of International Relations (CEBRI). He also serves as Associate Professor at the Institute of International Relations at the University of São Paulo (USP), and as an associate editor of the prestigious academic journal Foreign Policy Analysis and Editor-in-chief of CEBRI-Journal. Previously was a Visiting Fellow at the Department of Political Science at Yale University (2019-2020), and Program Chair of the 2020 Annual Meeting of the International Studies Association (Honolulu, Hawaii, USA).