Brics should boost trade with rest of Africa

• RAY MAHLAKA

Business leaders Patrice Motsepe (the founder and chair of Johannesburg Stock Exchange-listed African Rainbow) and Stavros Nicolaou (an executive at Aspen Pharmacare) have called on the Brics countries, Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, to boost their trading activity with each other and African countries.

They believe the formation of Brics has benefited all its member countries, especially South Africa.

The Brics economies accounted for about 21,3% of South Africa’s total trade with the world in 2022, of which China accounted for 67,6%, India 26,5%, Brazil 4,2% and Russia 1,7%, according to data from the Industrial Development Corporation.

South Africa’s overall trade with its Brics partners increased by an average of 10% from 2017 to 2021.

While Motsepe and Nicolaou believe these trade numbers are good, there is room to grow them to include the rest of Africa, they argued during panel discussions at the Brics Summit in Johannesburg on Tuesday.

There was a broader call for the Brics member countries, in their policies of trade, to engage with other African countries to explore trading opportunities.

The leaders of the Brics countries – South Africa’s president Cyril Ramaphosa, China’s president Xi Jinping, Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, India’s prime minister Narendra Modi and Russian president Vladimir Putin – are likely to consider the inputs of business executives when they chart policies that outline the next growth vectors for their bloc.

Motsepe called for the Brics countries in their trading activities to engage with and include the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) agreement.

Although the AfCFTA came into effect in January 2021, Motsepe believes it is not being implemented or rolled out with “extreme urgency” by African governments.

He says the Brics nations must engage with countries which have embraced the AfCFTA in an attempt to boost their trade with countries in the rest of Africa.

“At the heart of it has to be mutual benefit. About South Africa and the African continent, we have to position ourselves as a country and continent that produces goods that the Brics countries would want. You can’t have a relationship based on aid, philanthropy and donations,” Motsepe says.

“The future of African business and governments on the continent depends on the capacity to prove to the world we can build partnerships and have relationships that are mutually beneficial,” says Motsepe, who was the inaugural chair of the Brics Business Council’s South African chapter in 2013.

Nicolaou believes South Africa, as part of the Brics bloc, should find a way to boost trade with other countries in Africa.

“We [South Africa] are the second-biggest economy on the continent [after Nigeria]. South Africa remains the most industrialised, and with the most advanced financial services industry.

“As much as we lament the infrastructure problems and supply chain problems in the country, we are addressing them through reform measures,” Nicolaou says.

He says South Africa, through its economic muscle and membership of Brics, should push for increased trade with the rest of Africa.

“The most important thing is: How do we turn the deficit into opportunities for our businesses in South Africa and link them to the African continent through increased trade?” Nicolaou asks.

– Business Maverick