It is a very important point if you consider the fact that your BRICS markets are becoming increasingly integrated, because then if South Africa and South African businesses are not sufficiently prepared to compete with the BRICS partners, then we actually risk becoming primarily a consumer market, don't we, Advocate Kulu?

Yes, no, certainly that's where it's going to go.

Because remember, as I said to you, mere mutual membership doesn't mean that things are going to be easy.

There's still business, there's still competition, there's still innovation, there's still a lot of things that go into it, because these businesses must still survive.

So what we believe must happen is that economists in South Africa must really start onboarding some of their learnings on what does it actually take, for instance, a country like India, to be a leading ICT, IP country? How is China being able to be the most efficient manufacturing hub of the world? We are in association with the country, so those learnings should actually be embedded in the African continent.

How we also see it is that we need to also start moving some of that capacity into the continent, because our membership in BRICS, together with Ethiopia and Egypt, we see it as also a benefit for the continent.

So if this manufacturing capacity needs to scale, we should be able to sell the Africa scale so that some of these opportunities are not only just consumer trading, but also co-investing on manufacturing capacity on the continent, riding on the wave, the fact that India and China have proven themselves globally.

What can we realistically expect from this BRICS summit beyond the political declarations and broad commitments on trade and investment?

And given the recent tariff shifts in major markets, how will the Council help South African firms to diversify their markets and move up value chains to reduce vulnerability?

Part of the discussion that we had, and part of the recommendations that we as the Trade and Investment Working Group are working on to finalize for the India Summit is that we need to recommit ourselves to multitudes.

multilateralism.

We need to work together to create common positions in our advancement of positions, especially in institutions such as the World Trade Organization, and make sure that we restore rule-based a trade regime globally.

So what we are going to do is that we first need to protect transparency and the fairness of how tariffs are being levied, and then over and above that, start also spreading the immunity that comes with the Global South, so that we don't have a high level of concentration in traditional markets, but also start exposing the Global South in terms of trade opportunities.

So this is a big voice.

uh one of the biggest voices towards south so it can also be used for instance to leverage the implementation of the african continental state trade area we think we can use the big master profile opportunity of in classical trade so our view is that the classification of south africa lies in in classical trade and obviously can easily be supported by the fact that utopia are also members So we have three members in this block.

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