Timeline
24 August 2023
The BRICS Johannesburg Summit was the fifteenth annual heads-of-state summit of the BRICS grouping — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — convened…
1 January 2024
The five leaders agreed to invite six new members — Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — to join from , a process dr…
Positions at a glance
Supporters
The summit's defining outcome was the first expansion of the bloc since South Africa joined in 2010. The five leaders agreed to invite six new members — Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — to join from 1 January 2024, a process driven partly by China's push for a larger Global South counterweight to the G7. In the event, Argentina under President Javier Milei declined membership, while Saudi Arabia deferred its decision; Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the UAE formally acceded, and Indonesia later joined in January 2025 to form the grouping now styled "BRICS+." The Johannesburg Declaration also endorsed studying a BRICS common settlement mechanism and the use of national currencies in trade ("de-dollarisation"), tasked finance ministers and central bank governors to examine local-currency instruments, reaffirmed support for the New Development Bank (headquartered in Shanghai), and called for reform of the UN Security Council, the IMF and the WTO.
Opponents
The BRICS Johannesburg Summit was the fifteenth annual heads-of-state summit of the BRICS grouping — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — convened from 22 to 24 August 2023 at the Sandton Convention Centre in Johannesburg under South Africa's rotating chairmanship and the theme "BRICS and Africa: Partnership for Mutually Accelerated Growth, Sustainable Development and Inclusive Multilateralism." It was the first in-person BRICS summit since the COVID-19 pandemic and produced the landmark Johannesburg II Declaration. Russian President Vladimir Putin attended only by video link, since South Africa, as a State Party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, would have been obliged to execute the ICC's March 2023 arrest warrant against him; Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov represented Russia physically. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Chinese President Xi Jinping, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and host Cyril Ramaphosa attended in person.
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In August 2023, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa announced at the Johannesburg Summit that BRICS would invite Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UAE to join from 1 January 2024.
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