South Africa showcases significant Brics divergence

THE BRICS club came into being more than a decade and a half ago, and has only grown in popularity since, yet its coherence is increasingly questioned.

To be sure, there is no question that the Brics (originally Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) are a major, overall success story in aggregate. Today, these five nations (even before the expansion of the club this year to also include Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates) already account for around a quarter of global GDP.

This is up by over 10 percentage points from around a decade ago, and the overall growth of the five is globally systemically important. Indeed, data shows that, beginning in around 2020, the five Brics as a whole contribute more towards global GDP than the G7 industrialised nations (United States, Canada, Germany, Japan, United Kingdom, France and Italy) do, in terms of purchasing power parity.