The 2025 BRICS summit is the seventeenth annual BRICS summit, held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from 6th –7th July 2025, hosted leaders from the expanded BRICS bloc—including South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa and Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed—to strengthen ties across the Global South. At the summit, African leaders emphasized the continent’s critical role in shaping BRICS priorities, calling for deeper collaboration on trade, infrastructure, green energy, and intra-African market gr

How did the BRICS form and develop? BRICS is a grouping acronym referring to the initials of the five emerging national economies – namely, Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. The name of the association evolved from the term BRIC coined by Jim O’Neill from Goldman Sachs in 2001. O’Neill wanted to signal that much of the world’s economic growth would soon be generated by Brazil, Russia, India and China. In 2009, leaders from the four countries held their first meeting in Russia and vo