BRICS officially received 9 new nations as partner states on January 1 2025 expanding its size to roughly half of the global population and more than 41% of world GDP (PPP).
The new partner states include:
- Belarus
- Bolivia
- Cuba
- Indonesia
- Kazakhstan
- Malaysia
- Thailand
- Uganda
- Uzbekistan
For Uganda, it becomes the first country in East Africa to align with the group, and the move coming after President Yoweri Museveni threatened to seek new partners in 2023 when the World Bank suspended funding over the passage of an anti-homosexuality law.
‘The World Bank and Other Actors Are Our Problem and Really Under-Estimate All Africans,’ Says President of Uganda 🇺🇬
The above comment comes in response to the recent move by the World Bank to suspend any future funding for projects in Uganda citing human rights violations… pic.twitter.com/VWzkXjjwL5
— BitKE (@BitcoinKE) August 12, 2023
At the BRICS summit held in Kazan, Russia in October 2024, 13 countries received invitations to join BRICS as partners, setting them on a trajectory toward full membership in the near future.
Out of these, nine nations accepted the invitation, while the remaining four:
- Algeria
- Nigeria
- Turkey/Türkiye, and
- Vietnam
had not provided a formal response by the end of 2024.
In December 2024, the Russian government confirmed the admission of the nine new partners and expressed optimism, stating:
“We expect that responses from the other four will arrive in the near future.”
Originally established in 2009 as BRIC – comprising Brazil, Russia, India, and China – the organization expanded in 2010 with the inclusion of South Africa, becoming BRICS.
During the 2023 summit in Johannesburg, South Africa, the group announced another expansion, extending invitations to six additional nations:
- Argentina
- Egypt
- Ethiopia
- Iran
- Saudi Arabia, and
- The United Arab Emirates (UAE)
BRICS | Ethiopia 🇪🇹 and Egypt 🇪🇬 Among 6 New Nations Joining BRICS Starting January 2024
Broadening the scope of the coalition is a component of BRICS strategy to establish influence and restructure worldwide governance into a ‘multipolar’ global arrangement that prioritizes the… pic.twitter.com/JpDt44pJjt
— BitKE (@BitcoinKE) August 25, 2023
By January 2024, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the UAE had accepted their invitations and officially joined BRICS.
However, Saudi Arabia had yet to make a formal decision by the end of 2024 while Argentina’s far-right pro-U.S. leader, Javier Milei, who came to power in December 2023, revoked an earlier decision to join the group.
With the inclusion of the partner states, BRICS now encompasses nine of the 20 most populous countries in the world.
Together, these nations account for a combined population of approximately 4 billion people, representing nearly half of the global population.
Combined, the nine BRICS members and the additional nine BRICS partners account for over 41% of the global GDP, measured in terms of purchasing power parity (PPP).
Interestingly, the five founding BRICS members with a total GDP (PPP) of 33.76% represent a larger share of the global economy than the G7, which accounted for only 29.08% of the world’s GDP (PPP) in 2024.
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