Reports reaching the desk of Africa Today News, New York has it that Ethiopia has formally submitted its request to join the BRICS alliance and stressed that it was ‘hoping for a positive response’.
This move was confirmed on Friday morning by Foreign Minister Meles Alem.
Brics – which is an acronym for Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa – is usually perceived by some countries as an alternative to the G7 group of developed nations.
Ethiopia is one of the biggest economies in Africa and has enjoyed an increase in trade with China and India among others, but its economy has recently been ravaged by war and drought.
Africa Today News, New York recalls that earlier this month, the Brics group said they had received requests from dozens of countries, including a few African states, that wished to join the club of emerging economies.
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Brics countries have a combined population of more than 3.2 billion people, making up about 40% of the world’s roughly eight billion people.
Goldman Sachs economist Jim O’Neill coined the term BRIC (without South Africa) in 2001, claiming that by 2050 the four BRIC economies would come to dominate the global economy. South Africa was added to the list in 2010.
This thesis became conventional market wisdom in the aughts. But there were always skeptics, including some who claimed the phrase was Goldman marketing hype. Indeed, few talk about BRICS much anymore—at least not in terms of their global domination. Goldman closed its BRICS-focused investment fund in 2015, merging it with a broader emerging markets fund.
Africa Today News, New York understands that the notion behind the coinage was that the nations’ economies would come to collectively dominate global growth by 2050 regardless of the stiff competition building up.