build wider bridges with Africa

Online Village 2018: 07: 24.16: 11

By Swaran Singh

Johannesburg, 24/07/2018 (The People Online) – The X Summit of the BRICS in Johannesburg, which will be held from the 25th to the 27th of this month, it is the second occasion that will be celebrated in South Africa. Since then, he has earned the epithet "BRIC entry" to rapidly transform African nations. This year's theme "The BRICS in Africa: A Collaboration for Inclusive Growth and Shared Prosperity in the Fourth Industrial Revolution" marks a step forward since the last BRICS Summit held in Cape Town in 2013 under the slogan "BRICS and 39: Africa: Partnership for Integration and Industrialization. "

This new emphasis on building" inclusive "and" shared "partnerships using the" Fourth Industrial Revolution "shows how the" industrial revolution "can be achieved. Africa seeks to establish an innovative hi-tech link with the BRICS and use artificial intelligence and digital-biological-physics across the Internet to meet the ongoing challenges of development.

The expansion of the BRICS connection with Africa is largely highlighted by President Xi Jinping – who also heads the largest economy of the BRICS: visit Senegal and Rwanda before the next day. to arrive in Johannesburg. And continue the journey with a stopover in Mauritius to Beijing. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will arrive at the BRICS summit after official visits to Rwanda and Uganda, as part of efforts to expand Indian relations beyond the nations of East Africa.

As South African Foreign Minister Lindiwe Sisulu pointed out in a recent article, BRICS leaders will explore ways in which Africa can "diversify and modernize its economies through infrastructure development, knowledge exchange, access to technology, capacity building and investment in human capital. "

All this makes BRICS an ideal partner for the African continent.

For its part, South Africa has the special responsibility of ensuring that the BRICS-Africa association is effective and efficient Despite criticism that South Africa did not represent "real" Africa, it was invited to join the BRIC group in 2010. Even Jim O Neil, former president of Goldman Sachs Asset Management and British economist who invented the acronym "BRIC", expressed dissatisfaction with this decision, saying that South Africa was too small and had a growth rate too low to be the fifth member of the group.There were even suspicions as to whether the real value of South Africa within this group was to be an "entry" for the BRIC economies to access African resources and markets, to maintain and increase their own growth rates 19659004] A rapid development of the BRIC-Africa relationship preceded the entry of South Africa into the select group. Since then, contributions from South Africa have been questioned.

In the decade preceding the fifth member of the emerging economies group of South Africa, the BRIC group accounted for 30% of world trade with Africa and combined investments. of 60 billion, the biggest part was Chinese investment. According to reports of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development 2010-2015, among the top 10 investors in Africa, China has gone from seventh to fourth position and India has gone from eighth to the sixth position. South Africa, rich in resources, Nigeria rich in oil and Niger, Uganda and Tanzania, rich in uranium, are still essential to the growing energy deficit in China and India. The unprecedented increase in Chinese trade with Africa, which had risen to 3.5 billion in 1990, reached 170 billion dollars in 2017. Today, it accounts for two-thirds total BRICS trade with Africa.

Brazil's strong ancestral relations with Africa have allowed its trade to grow from $ 4.2 billion to $ 26 billion between 2000 and 2008. Then there has been a worldwide slowdown and lower prices. The economic recession has led to a sharp decline in bilateral trade. However, in recent times, Brazil-Africa trade has shown signs of recovery: $ 12 billion in trade in 2017. During this period, the diplomatic missions of Brazil in Africa have increased from 15 to 39 seats. [19659004] As for Russia, it maintains important defense relations and sends close to one million tourists to Africa. However, its trade slowly grew from one billion to eight billion dollars between 2001 and 2008, when it was hit by the global financial crisis. Now Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to strengthen his country's ties with Africa. And following the initiative of China and India, a Russia – Africa summit will be organized next year.

But the most obvious fact is the decline in US trade with Africa: from $ 100 billion in 2008 to $ 39 billion in 2017. And now, with President Trump's tariff war in progress, all allies and opponents of the United States are being pushed to explore other alignments. In this new context, the South African host can become the regional hub of the BRICS 'new Development Bank and continue to catalyze and accelerate the commitment to economic development with the development of the BRICS. ;Africa.

The fact that the growth rates of BRICS trade with Africa continue to exceed the growth rates of average world trade and the BRICS trade with the rest of the world augurs positive signals for the X BRICS summit to give new life to building wider bridges with Africa. [19659004] The author is a professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru University of New Delhi and a visiting professor at the Kunming Indian Ocean Economics Research Institute.

(Web Editor: Rosa Liu, Rocío Huang)