President Ramaphosa Plans To Push The African Agenda At The BRICS Annual Summit

Africa will have a powerful voice at the table when President Cyril Ramaphosa meets with other leaders of BRICS countries.

"When we chair BRICS this year, having taken over from China, we are going to be advancing the African agenda and when we hold BRICS, we are going to invite various African countries to come to be the outreach part of Brics, like we did the last time," said Ramaphosa, as reported by Herald.

"We believe that this is Africa's century and therefore even BRICS must embrace that, and even other forums like G20 and G7 must embrace that. We are inherently and will always be Pan-Africans," he further added.

Ramaphosa spoke to the media after a wreath-laying ceremony at the gravesite of late former ANC president Zaccheus Mahabane in Kroonstad, Free State.

South Africa takes over the chairmanship of BRICS under the theme of "BRICS and Africa: Partnership for Mutually Accelerated Growth, Sustainable Development, and Inclusive Multilateralism," SABC News reported.

Earlier, the country's ruling party further said that South Africa will use its chairship to push for the admission of new member countries to the bloc. The move fits in with the party's goal to strengthen alliances.

The annual summit of the BRICS countries, to be held in South Africa this year, will also discuss the possibility of allowing Saudi Arabia and other countries to join the bloc. This was something that Ramaphosa indicated in October as being of keen interest to many nations.

The first meeting of the group was held in St Petersburg in 2005 and was called RIC, which stood for Russia, India, and China. Later, Brazil joined, and finally, South Africa in 2010, at which point it was referred to as BRICS. The acronym BRICS is derived from the members' names in English. The bloc collectively represents about 42 percent of the world's population.

Meanwhile, South Africa has been entirely ignored in the New Year's greetings from Russian President Vladimir Putin to members of the BRICS bloc.

In an official post on the Kremlin administration website, South Africa was not mentioned alongside the other three nations.