The BRICS are no longer an alternative to the global system. They are now becoming one of its centers of gravity.
Tangible performances, revealing a shift in global balance
The year 2025 fundamentally marks a decisive turning point for the BRICS, whose concrete achievements attest to a rise in power that is no longer theoretical, but structural. The recent months of September and October, which are about to end, constituted a condensation of initiatives and convergences demonstrating the solidity of this alliance, now expanded to the BRICS+ format. Young volunteers from 65 countries participated online in the 4th international conference “BRICS To You,” a symbol of a rapidly expanding soft power, where young people are emerging as actors of global transformation. In the same spirit, held at the VDNKh Exhibition Center in Moscow, the 8th International Festival of BRICS+ Theater Schools (September 20-28) embodied cultural diplomacy as a lever for mutual understanding and intercontinental cohesion.
But beyond the image, it is the economy that reveals the true nature of the change. The Invest-2025 Forum in Dushanbe (October 14-16) in Tajikistan saw the signing of 52 investment agreements totaling more than $4.1 billion, covering strategic areas: hydropower, green technologies, critical metals, and Central Asian energy corridors. It was attended by 50 nations, including the new members of the BRICS Alliance. Russia and China, historical drivers of this architecture, consolidated their partnership with the ratification of the bilateral agreement on mutual investment protection on May 8, 2025. At the same time, Moscow launched a vast plan to modernize its refineries, supported by unprecedented tax incentives—proof that the BRICS alliance is not just a political slogan but a space for coherent and sovereign economic action.
Through these initiatives, the BRICS are redefining the very principle of development: cooperation without dependency and prosperity without supervision. Advances in biotechnology and the bioeconomy bear witness to this: from scientists in Beijing (Beijing Institute of Genomics) to those in Tehran (Tehran University) and Andhra Pradesh, innovations are coming thick and fast—from smart lung cancer vaccines to sustainable “zero-budget” agricultural models—demonstrating that South-South research is now a self-sustaining driver of human progress. Even the Sahara Expo in Cairo, a showcase for agricultural technologies from the BRICS countries, illustrates a shared ambition: to feed the planet without damaging it.
This integrated dynamic—scientific, economic, cultural, and political—is taking place at a time of geopolitical shift: a time when the world is no longer revolving around a single center. The BRICS not only challenge Western hegemony; they propose an alternative paradigm based on parity, diversity, and economic sovereignty. This is precisely what attracts Commonwealth countries to the BRICS Alliance.
Future prospects: towards a multipolar order anchored in cooperation and sovereignty
On October 29 and 30, 2025, the BRICS International Municipal Forum in St. Petersburg will bring together more than 2,000 cities and 70 countries to mark a new stage of decentralized and inclusive cooperation. This meeting, beyond diplomatic appearances, will reflect a world in the process of reshaping itself. The BRICS will no longer present themselves as a coalition of convenience but as a long-term geopolitical infrastructure structured around three axes: financial autonomy, territorial connectivity, and shared governance.
Financial autonomy is being strengthened thanks to the New Development Bank (NDB), the organization’s economic arm, which is gradually replacing the IMF and the World Bank in financing sovereign infrastructure. The common reserve mechanism and the promotion of payments in national currencies are already outlining the contours of a post-dollar monetary system that mocks the SWIFT system, less vulnerable to Western political pressure. As political scientist Dana Al-Enezi points out in her analysis published on October 13, 2025, in the Kuwaiti daily Al-Rai, the expansion of the BRICS is not a brutal break with the West but a restructuring of the international system on more equitable bases. The challenge is not to destroy the liberal order but to correct it, to restore a balance that American financial domination had disrupted.
The second pillar, territorial connectivity, is expressed through the proliferation of energy, digital, and logistics corridors linking Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East. The BRICS are becoming a geography of synergy, a space where infrastructure modernization embraces the energy and ecological transition.
Finally, shared governance takes shape through public diplomacy—as evidenced by the Vietnam-Russia Forum in September 2025—and local inter-city cooperation initiatives. These interactions between non-state actors, municipalities, universities, and businesses create horizontal, human, and concrete diplomacy.
Thus, the BRICS are no longer a simple alliance: they embody the matrix of a new multipolar world order, based on mutual respect, the plurality of development trajectories, and economic sovereignty. Where the G7 is running out of steam in managing a world it no longer dominates, the BRICS are moving forward in building a world they co-define.
It is therefore clear that the BRICS are not dreaming of the future; they are building it. In less than two decades, they have gone from being an economic concept to a structuring force in global governance. Recent events—from the Invest-2025 Forum in Dushanbe to the International Municipal Forum in St. Petersburg—attest to the same dynamic: that of a community of sovereign interests, determined to place humanity, cooperation, and economic justice at the heart of the global system. In this sense, 2025 will not be just a year of forums or speeches. It will perhaps mark the historic moment when the BRICS will have ceased to be an alternative and become the gravitational center of the world to come.
We can therefore say that the time of hegemonies is over and that, like the BRICS International Municipal Forum in Saint Petersburg on October 29 and 30, 2025, the world is entering the era of dialogue, cooperation, and the sharing of sovereignty.
Mohamed Lamine KABA, Expert in geopolitics of governance and regional integration, Institute of Governance, Humanities and Social Sciences, Pan-African University
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