Locating BRICS Development Strategies in Global Development Policy Narratives

Abstract

This discussion focuses on whether Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa (BRICS) alternative framings of International Development Aid (IDA) differ from those dominating Northern liberal and neoliberal development narratives and policy settings. Are the BRICS as emerging powers/donors in the new ‘Beyond Aid’ debate in the process of constructing a new development paradigm? Beyond Aid is linked to South–South cooperation that ostensibly charts a new development path for both BRICS and the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC). The analysis reveals that BRICS official development narratives and policies remain embedded in global systemic realities of North–South domination, linked to multilateral institutional dynamics. BRICS development poses risks of entrenching and recreating economic patterns of economic co-dependency and exploitation in the South, particularly Africa.