By Liu Yuanhui, CGTN

The Driver’s Cabin

What do 20 years of BRICS cooperation look like? One answer, I thought after reading a recent story from an Indian publication, sits in the driver’s cabin of a train outside Delhi. At the controls is Shivani, a young woman from a farming family in Uttar Pradesh. Until recently, she had never driven a car. Today, she operates one of India’s semi high-speed Namo Bharat trains, traveling at speeds her family could hardly have imagined when she was growing up.

The story is a personal one. But there’s a larger story too. India built the railway to meet its needs for connectivity. The New Development Bank, founded by the BRICS countries, supported part of the project.

Different Countries, Different Strengths

Twenty years on, BRICS is a larger and more diverse family. Its members span four continents and differ in almost every obvious way: history, political systems, economic structures and development priorities.

China has a complete industrial system, a huge market and growing strengths in the digital economy and advanced manufacturing. India and Indonesia bring large populations and rapidly expanding domestic markets. Russia, Brazil and Gulf countries have major advantages in energy, minerals, agriculture and other strategic resources. Egypt, South Africa and Ethiopia have strengthened BRICS’s presence in Africa, while the United Arab Emirates has become an important hub for finance, logistics and global trade.

That diversity may be one of BRICS’ greatest assets. The group has what many economies need but cannot provide alone: resources, factories, technology, energy, large consumer markets and access to major trade routes.

A farm needs buyers. A factory needs energy and raw materials. A port needs cargo. A growing industry needs investment and technology. The challenge is to find more places where their strengths can work together.

Where Cooperation Ranks First

Egypt is one such place. Along the Suez Canal, Indian companies are investing in new industrial projects, attracted to Egypt’s location and its role as a bridge between Africa, the Middle East and Europe. In August, on the sidelines of the BRICS Trade Ministers’ Meeting in Jaipur, Egypt and India explored new opportunities for cooperation in pharmaceutical and fertilizer manufacturing, while continuing discussions on establishing an Indian industrial zone in Egypt’s Suez Canal Economic Zone.

This is just one example of cooperation among BRICS countries. There are synergies that can arise from Brazil’s agricultural strength, Gulf finance, African markets, and China’s industrial capacity.

China also has an important role in building this integrated economic network. As the largest economy in BRICS, China brings a vast market and experience in infrastructure, supply chains and advanced technologies.

Today, in the Benban Solar Park in Egypt, rows of solar panels harness the region’s abundant sunshine to generate much-needed electricity for local communities and businesses. On the outskirts of João Câmara in Brazil, the Gameleira Wind Complex, built by a Chinese company, supplies around 360 million kilowatt-hours of clean electricity each year; equivalent to saving about 129,600 tonnes of standard coal. By supporting renewable energy and low-carbon infrastructure projects across BRICS countries, China is helping its partners pursue a new path of industrialization that is more clean and efficient.

This is where the larger significance of BRICS+ can be found: The wider network in which countries once looked mainly toward traditional centers to drive economic growth, can now increasingly find opportunities and alternatives among one another.

Diverse Paths, Shared Interests

What has held BRICS together for 20 years is the recognition that countries can have different paths and still share important common interests: Development, trade, investment, financing, industrial growth and a greater voice for emerging and developing countries. The real test is if those different paths can lead to practical cooperation.

Twenty years ago, the mechanism began with four foreign ministers meeting on the sidelines of the United Nations’ annual General Assembly. Today, it has grown into a broader and more diverse family of countries, brought together by the prospect of mutually beneficial cooperation. The answers to this cooperation will appear in nations’ socio-economic data. But it’s also already visible in other forms: A wind farm generating power in Brazil’s outskirts, an industrial zone near the Suez Canal…and a 24-year-old Indian girl who now sits at the controls of a faster train.