The enlargement of BRICS presents Africa with a wider field of economic possibilities by bringing the continent into closer relationship with some of the world’s largest markets, important sources of development finance and countries possessing substantial capabilities in manufacturing, energy, infrastructure, pharmaceuticals, agriculture and advanced technologies. At a time when international economic relations are becoming increasingly fragmented, this wider range of relationships gives African countries greater room for manoeuvre.
But a wider choice of trading partners, financiers and technological partners will mean considerably less if Africa continues to export raw materials, import sophisticated technologies and occupy the lower reaches of global value chains, because the destination of our commodities may become more diversified without fundamentally altering our position in the international division of labour. It is not the direction of extraction that has ever been the problem, but its structure.
This should therefore be the central African question about BRICS as it enters its third decade: how do we use this changing configuration of economic relationships to build productive power on the continent? The measure of Africa’s engagement with BRICS cannot simply be the increase in trade, investment or infrastructure finance, but must increasingly be whether these relationships enable African economies to convert their minerals, energy resources, labour, knowledge and expanding continental market into greater productive, technological and institutional capability.
Africa’s experience gives this question particular historical significance. The continent has been deeply integrated into the world economy for centuries, but largely through an economic structure in which minerals and agricultural commodities travelled enormous distances while much of the processing, manufacturing, technology and financial value associated with them accumulated elsewhere. That structure remains recognisable in economies that export crude oil while importing refined petroleum products, export mineral ores while importing machinery and manufactured components and export agricultural commodities while importing processed goods derived from the same productive base.
The post-colonial challenge has therefore never been to trade more but to build the productive capabilities that allow African economies to retain more value from what they produce. Yet this has become more difficult as several economies have experienced premature deindustrialisation before manufacturing reached the scale needed to absorb large numbers of workers and sustain productivity growth. Domestic firms are frequently small, supplier networks remain shallow, and the relationship between universities, technical institutions and industry is often weak. Infrastructure still too often reflects the historical logic of moving commodities from sites of extraction to ports rather than connecting African centres of production.
The African Continental Free Trade Area creates the possibility of changing the scale at which we approach some of these problems. A continental market can support forms of industrial specialisation that smaller national markets cannot, but the agreement will acquire its full developmental significance only when African firms possess the productive capacity to supply that market. Lowering tariffs creates trade opportunities; it does not by itself produce the firms, electricity, logistics, finance, skills and technical standards required to take advantage of those opportunities.
The emergence of BRICS creates new possibilities within this African project, but it does not guarantee the outcome. Consider the minerals required for the global energy transition. African countries possess significant deposits of manganese, platinum-group metals, cobalt, lithium and other minerals required for batteries, electric mobility, renewable-energy systems and the wider low-carbon economy. Several BRICS economies already represent substantial sources of demand for these minerals, and their industrial and technological ambitions are likely to further increase that demand. The question is whether it can be structured to support African processing, refining and manufacturing rather than simply accelerating the export of unprocessed ore. For South Africa, this means asking whether its mineral endowments, established industrial base, scientific institutions and engineering capabilities can support new activities in batteries, fuel cells, electric mobility and renewable-energy equipment. Elsewhere on the continent, mineral extraction can be progressively connected to refining, processing, component manufacturing, engineering services and technical skills.
Regional integration consequently must become as much an industrial project as a trade project. A viable African battery value chain need not be reproduced inside the borders of a single country. Minerals extracted in one economy can be processed in another, components can be manufactured where industrial capabilities already exist, with assembly occurring close to sufficiently large markets. The strategic objective should be to connect these capabilities across the continent so that regional integration progressively expands the number of African firms, workers and economies participating in higher-value activities. Regional institutions have recognised this opening. Both SADC and SACU have recently developed strategies to leverage their members’ critical mineral endowments for industrial development rather than raw export, embedding the beneficiation agenda within regional frameworks rather than leaving it to individual countries to negotiate alone. The question for BRICS partners is whether their infrastructure finance can connect regional production rather than reinforcing the extractive economic geography that routes everything to ports.
The experience of Indonesia is instructive in this respect. By restricting the export of unprocessed nickel ore, Indonesia used its resource endowment as an instrument of industrial policy, compelling downstream investment in domestic refining and processing and generating a measurable expansion of manufacturing activity around the minerals sector. The conditions in Indonesia differ from those across African mineral-producing economies, and no single approach transfers without adaptation, but the underlying logic, that a country with significant mineral endowments can use its position in global supply chains to anchor productive capability rather than to service demand, is directly relevant to the African debate. SADC and SACU frameworks enable the collective pursuit of that logic rather than individually, which considerably strengthens the negotiating position of member states.
BRICS cooperation can be brought directly into this developmental space. Its members collectively possess capabilities that African economies require industrial finance, advanced manufacturing, energy technologies, digital systems, agricultural technologies, pharmaceuticals, logistics expertise and large consumer markets. The strategic African objective should therefore be to use these relationships to close specific productive gaps, rather than to approach BRICS principally as another destination for commodities. The test of each partnership is whether it leaves firms stronger, engineers more capable, supplier networks deeper and regulatory institutions better equipped than before.
This requires developmental statecraft, understood not as a rhetorical commitment to the state’s role in development but as the organised capacity of public institutions to identify productive opportunities, direct finance towards them, negotiate technology partnerships on terms that leave capabilities behind, coordinate the different policy instruments that productive transformation requires and sustain that effort through the inevitable difficulties of implementation. State capability, in this sense, is the operational form of sovereignty in practice. A government may possess all the formal attributes of sovereign authority whilst systematically lacking the institutional capacity to negotiate effectively with international capital, enforce agreements, direct finance towards developmental ends or build the regulatory knowledge that separates a beneficial technology partnership from another form of dependency.
The infrastructure and technology challenges illustrate the practical implications. Much of Africa’s transport network still reflects an extractive economic geography. The next generation of infrastructure must connect African economies and link transport corridors to processing facilities, industrial parks, energy systems, universities, cities and regional markets rather than simply moving commodities more efficiently to ports. When an African country acquires sophisticated technology, the relevant question is what remains after the transaction: whether our engineers understand it, whether our universities can teach and improve it, whether domestic firms can enter its supply chains and whether we can progressively adapt it to local circumstances. The developmental value of technology partnerships lies ultimately in the capabilities they leave behind, and state capability is what determines whether those conditions are written into agreements and enforced when partners resist them.
Finance is an equally pressing matter in the African context. Large infrastructure projects can attract BRICS capital, but smaller domestic manufacturers and regional suppliers frequently lack the patient finance required to expand production, meet technical standards and enter value chains. BRICS financing mechanisms, including the New Development Bank, could make a particularly consequential African contribution by complementing large infrastructure investment with financing for productive enterprises, supplier networks and industrial projects.
For Africa, these possibilities will not materialise automatically. The continent possesses many of the minerals upon which emerging industries will depend, the youngest population of any continent, enormous renewable-energy potential and a continental market whose importance will grow considerably during this century. But history provides ample evidence that endowments do not, by themselves, produce development, and the responsibilities that follow from this understanding fall primarily on African states rather than on any external partner. BRICS cannot perform these functions on Africa’s behalf, nor should it. What it can do is enlarge the range of instruments available to countries pursuing productive transformation.
Africa, therefore, confronts BRICS with both an opportunity and a test: the opportunity is a wider range of markets, finance, technologies, industrial partners and development experiences, while the test is whether the continent uses this greater room for manoeuvre to change its productive structure or merely to diversify the destinations to which its commodities are exported. BRICS can enlarge Africa’s field of possibilities, but it cannot determine what Africa builds within it. The changing international order can give Africa greater room to act, while productive power will determine what we can do with that room.
Source: Globetrotter
