Africa-Press – Botswana. Vice President, Mr Slumber Tsogwane on Thursday left for Johannesburg, South Africa, for a single day visit to represent the country at the ongoing BRICS Summit, where Botswana has been invited to participate in discussions around BRICS-Africa Outreach.
This year’s BRICS Summit is centred on the theme “BRICS and Africa: Strengthening the Mutually Beneficial Partnership for Growth, Development, Peace and Inclusive Multilateralism” and Vice President Tsogwane was accorded the platform to participate in the dialogue on Thursday, alongside heads of state and government from 40 countries.
Made of five core countries, all large scale emerging economies, the BRICS were established in 2009, initially by Brazil, Russia, India and China, who them used the name BRIC, an acronym of the four states. The name was altered to BRICS with the addition of South Africa a year later in 2010.
To supplement their work, they established an auxiliary body, the BRICS Forum in 2011 to encourage commercial, political, and cultural cooperation among the member states, who two years later agreed to also create the New Development Bank (NDB), global financial institution to finance projects in a manner similar to the World Bank and other international lending institutions.
The NDB was established in July 2014, with headquarters in Shanghai China, and a regional office in Johannesburg, South Africa, with a mission to cooperate with existing international organisations, and to provide technical assistance to projects supported by the bank.
The 15th BRICS Summit hosted in South Africa, focuses on improving relations between the grouping and Africa, as well as considering a “BRICS Plus” expansion where six emerging markets, Egypt, Ethiopia, Argentina, Iran, and United Arab Emirates (UAE) were invited to officially join BRICS.
After days of closed door plenary meetings involving the heads of state, ministers and government officials from the BRICS member states, the platform on Thursday was afforded to an address from the United Nations Secretary General, the President of NDB, as well as statements by other heads of state, Vice Presidents, Prime Ministers and Foreign Ministers of invited states including Botswana.
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