BRICS finance ministers and central bank governors have issued a joint call for fundamental reform of global development financial institutions, according to CNBC Africa, pushing for institutions such as the World Bank and IMF to better serve the financing needs of developing economies — a bloc that now collectively represents more than 40% of global GDP and over 30% of world trade.
The demand is not merely rhetorical. BRICS members — Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, and the newer entrants including Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the UAE — have spent the past two years constructing the institutional scaffolding for a parallel financial order. The reform push at the multilateral level and the infrastructure build at the bilateral level are two sides of the same strategic bet: that the current dollar-denominated system under-serves emerging markets on cost, speed, and political neutrality.
The payments dimension of this ambition is already operational in parts. CNBC Africa's reporting on the BRICS payment landscape outlines a landscape where member states are actively piloting local-currency settlement corridors, BRICS Pay interoperability frameworks, and central bank digital currency (CBDC) linkages — all designed to reduce exposure to SWIFT and dollar clearing. Russia and China have the most mature bilateral rails; India's UPI has become a reference architecture that several BRICS partners are studying for domestic fast-payment buildouts.
For Africa specifically, the stakes are material. South Africa is the bloc's sole African founding member, but Egypt and Ethiopia's accession in 2024 brings the continent's two most populous economies into the tent. Combined, these three countries represent a substantial share of intra-African trade flows. If BRICS payment corridors mature, African exporters trading with China, India, or the Gulf could see transaction costs fall and settlement times compress — the two variables that most consistently kill SME participation in cross-border commerce.
The reform pressure on development finance institutions matters equally. Africa carries an estimated $1.3 trillion infrastructure financing gap annually, according to the African Development Bank, and multilateral development banks remain the lowest-cost source of long-term capital for sovereign borrowers. BRICS finance chiefs arguing for larger voting shares, faster disbursement mechanisms, and reduced conditionality are, in effect, arguing for terms that African finance ministers have demanded for decades. The New Development Bank — the BRICS-founded multilateral based in Shanghai — has approved over $30 billion in financing since 2016, though its Africa exposure remains a fraction of that total.
The South African angle is worth isolating. Johannesburg-listed chemicals and explosives group Omnia, flagged by CNBC Africa as its Stock of the Week, is a useful lens on how geopolitical reordering translates into corporate strategy. Omnia operates across agriculture (fertilisers), mining (explosives and blasting), and chemicals, with significant revenue exposure to sub-Saharan Africa and Australia. As BRICS supply chains shift and input-cost dynamics change with any weakening of dollar denomination in commodity trade, companies like Omnia — straddling mining inputs and agricultural chemistry — sit directly in the path of both risk and opportunity.
The near-term test is whether BRICS payment architecture moves beyond pilots. Current corridors handle a fraction of total trade; the dollar still clears the overwhelming majority of commodity contracts, including oil, copper, and gold — all assets where BRICS members are major producers or consumers. Institutional inertia and US sanctions risk act as powerful brakes. But the direction is set, and the finance ministers' communiqué adds political momentum to what is already a technical build.
Why it matters: For African operators and investors, the BRICS reform agenda is the most consequential attempt in a generation to alter the cost structure of cross-border finance in the Global South — and with Egypt, Ethiopia, and South Africa now inside the bloc, the continent has real seats at a table where the next decade's payment rails and development finance terms are being negotiated.