BRICS Courts Africa's Resources and Forgets Africa's Voters

Five think tanks, from Johannesburg to Abu Dhabi, from New York to Cambridge, Massachusetts, sat down on 16 September to dissect the New Delhi BRICS summit. They talked about "global governance" and "the next phase" of a bloc that now counts South Africa and Egypt among its members, with Ethiopia alongside them. The webinar was polished. The panelists were articulate. And somewhere in all that polish, one question never got asked: who in Kinshasa, Khartoum, Lagos or Addis Ababa was consulted about any of it?

We should be honest about what BRICS is. It is a club of powerful states that want a different order, one in which they are not lectured by Washington and Brussels. Some of that frustration is legitimate. The Western powers that preach democracy at us have spent decades bankrolling the very autocrats who loot our treasuries. But a club that rejects Western hypocrisy is not automatically on our side. Being anti-Western is not the same as being pro-African, and the people sitting around that table know the difference better than anyone.

Look at who is in the room. The UAE joined BRICS as a full member in 2024, and it sits at the centre of a gold trade that has moved Sudanese and other African gold through its hands with very little scrutiny. UN Panel of Experts reports on Sudan have documented alleged supply routes linking the UAE to the Rapid Support Forces, the paramilitary force that has turned Darfur and Khartoum into killing fields. The UAE denies the allegations. But when a Sudanese mother sees her village burned and then sees the gold that paid for the fire polished and sold in Dubai, she does not need a think tank to explain the economics to her. She already understands who profits from her grief.

Russia brings its own brand of extraction. After Wagner's rebranding, Moscow's security footprint in the Sahel, through what it now calls the Africa Corps, has been sold to juntas as sovereignty and delivered as a protection racket. Mali's generals traded elected government for Russian guns and promises of regime survival, and the people who pay are the farmers, herders and schoolchildren caught between the army, the jihadists and the mercenaries. China, meanwhile, builds the railways and ports that are then used to secure loans that become leverage over the very governments that signed them. India, for its part, is hungry for African markets, energy and critical minerals, and it speaks the language of partnership while competing for the same contracts. Every one of these powers is pursuing influence on our continent. None of them is pursuing our democracy.

Let us say this plainly, because the continent has been too polite about it for too long. This is the new scramble for Africa. The flags have changed. The Berlin conference is no longer the table. But the logic is the same as it was in 1884: outside powers decide what our resources are worth, which of our leaders are useful, and which of our citizens are expendable. The difference is that today this scramble is dressed up in the language of multipolarity, South-South solidarity and development finance. Those words should make us more suspicious, not less.

Now consider what the African members of BRICS are supposed to represent. South Africa has a constitution that its people fought and bled for, and an independent judiciary that has told presidents no. Egypt and Ethiopia hold millions of citizens whose freedoms are rationed by security services that answer to the state, not to the public. A bloc that brings these governments together with the UAE and Russia does not automatically make them stronger. It may simply make them quieter. When the price of a seat at the table is silence about human rights, the seat is not a victory. It is a bribe paid in democratic currency.

So what should be done? Let us be concrete, because vague optimism is how Africa keeps losing.

First, the African Union must stop letting its members negotiate separately with blocs that are designed to divide them. The AU and the African Continental Free Trade Area exist precisely so that a continent of 1.4 billion people bargains as one market, not as fifty-four supplicants. The AU Commission should publish a unified African position on any deal that touches minerals, arms or infrastructure debt, and it should insist that every bilateral agreement be consistent with it.

Second, parliaments must claw back the power that executives have quietly surrendered. No mining concession, arms purchase, security pact or Chinese or Gulf loan should be signed in secret. Contracts must be published, beneficial ownership disclosed, and every security deal subjected to a legislative vote. If a minister cannot defend a deal in open parliament, that deal should not exist.

Third, we should learn from the countries that have already shown what right looks like. Botswana built one of Africa's most prosperous economies on diamonds precisely because it insisted on transparent, government-controlled partnerships and kept its institutions strong enough to say no. Mauritius built a financial and services hub on rule of law, low corruption and open markets. Ghana and Senegal have shown that an incumbent can lose an election and hand over power peacefully. These are the building blocks: property rights, independent courts, competitive markets, and governments that answer to voters. A foreign partner that respects those things is worth engaging. A partner that undermines them is simply a more sophisticated looter.

Finally, civil society, the press and the private sector have a role that is too often left to diplomats. Journalists should follow the gold, the guns and the loans with the same diligence they bring to a corruption scandal at home. Business associations should refuse to launder resources through opaque intermediaries. Citizens should ask their MPs a simple question at every town hall: what did this deal cost us, and who signed it without asking us?

We are told that the world is becoming multipolar and that Africa is finally being courted. Courted by whom, and for what? A suitor who only wants your minerals and your votes is not a partner. He is a creditor waiting for the bill.

So here is the demand, and we will repeat it until someone in those five think tanks, and in every capital that sent a delegation to New Delhi, has to answer it. Publish every contract. Vote on every security deal. Enforce the AU's own commitments to democracy and to ending coup-installed governments. Refuse any partnership that buys silence on human rights. And when BRICS talks about the future of global governance, every African citizen should be able to ask, out loud and without fear: where is my seat, and who gave you the right to decide my future without me?

Based on reporting by SAIIA