BRICS is not the answer.
We mustn’t always join things that are already started by others.
We can also start things.
Others and us don’t always have the same historical lived experiences or current situation and future priorities. Or overall perspectives on geopolitics. Or strengths. Or weaknesses.
Every time we join one of these we end up at the back of the class. Because the structure of the world, how it works, already puts Africa at the back of the class.
And none of these organizations, from BRICS to WTO, to UN and others, are invested in challenging or changing the world order.
They are themselves, the world order.
I’ve written more extensively, elsewhere, why Africa must consider the 3rd way, its own self led alternative to BRICS.
Yes, I know this is way over the heads of most current African leaders, not the least the Nigerian leadership. It is particularly shameful that Nigeria is banging on the door, from the back of the room where BRICS has relegated Africa’s most important economy.
That in itself is the lesson.
So many internal fundamentals to be corrected before something like BRICS can be useful for Africa.
AfCFTA for instance. Where’s that? How’s that going? Is that still a neocolonial project with European and Chinese puppet masters and African implementers? Or does Africa really have control of this massive idea and it’s unparalleled potential to disrupt the global architecture?
If AfCFTA remains a paper tiger, BRICS can never work for Africa. It can only work against us, like every other neocolonial palliative before.
The African Union for instance. How’s that going?
Or the African Development Bank - are these still institutions where former colonizers presently hold majority stakes, and even attend our meetings?
As long as our internal status quo is unbroken, no foreign idea, not even BRICS, can rescue Africa.
And the AES? How’s that going?
The Alliance of Sahel States was supposed to be a teachable moment for the rest of Africa. Instead, it exposed how deeply France is embedded, not only in “francophone” Africa, but all the way to Kenya, South Africa and Nigeria.
As long as AES remain outsiders to ECOWAS, a million BRICS can never rescue Africa from global economic servitude.
As we speak, South Africa is unraveling deeper and deeper into the chasmic vortices of violent Afrophobic xenophobia.
The state itself won’t stop it, because the state and the afrophobes are on the same team.
Other African nations whose citizens are being killed, and forcefully exiled, won’t do anything because the African Union and its member states are a shadow of themselves.
As long as this internal contradiction persists, nothing BRICS can promise will overturn Africa’s own unwillingness to take charge of itself.
BRICS is against the colonizer class. But for you to be against anything, you first have to be for yourself.
Are we for ourselves? Is Africa for Africa?
Or are we still answering to just about any hunter’s whistle in the global forest?
Africa needs to confront its internal contradictions and lack of preparedness, then come to the negotiating table with BRICS, or any other organization, with a stronger position.
Until then, it’s a farce.
Pipe dream.
A naked dance in the public square at midnight.
Another talk shop that will end up irresponsibly transmitting the burden of economic underdevelopment and political inferiority to one more African generation.
For all its hype, BRICS will end up on the photo wall of history, an inert non-contributor, like every other talk shop before it.
Unless we ask root questions.
Unless we challenge structures, structures that have determined outcomes for 400 years.
The stakes are set.
We are not ready.
BRICS is not for us.
Move on.