The BRICS Strategic Agenda
Development
The UAE and BRICS
A Strategic Partnership
The UAE’s accession to BRICS in January 2024 reflects its commitment to a multi-aligned foreign policy and interest in deepening engagement with emerging economies. This step complements existing partnerships and aligns with the country’s broader economic development goals. Through BRICS, the UAE is exploring opportunities for collaboration in trade, investment, climate, and infrastructure. Strategic connectivity initiatives, including key trade corridors, are potential avenues for enhanced cooperation, reinforcing the UAE’s role as a regional and global hub.
BRICS is a strategic alliance originally formed by five major emerging economies—Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—to promote a more multipolar world and strengthen the Global South’s role in global affairs. The alliance expanded to include Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates. Originally focused on economic cooperation, it has grown into a political and economic platform advocating for reforms to traditional global institutions.
All BRICS members have equal status and rotate leadership annually. Participation is voluntary and based on national interests, allowing flexible, issue-based engagement. New members integrate into existing structures, join the Sherpa and Finance Tracks, and may become New Development Bank shareholders.
At BRICS UAE Chapter, we are dedicated to supporting entrepreneurship and empowering young individuals to realize their business ambitions. Through our programs and initiatives, we provide valuable resources, mentorship, and networking opportunities that enable entrepreneurs to build successful businesses. We believe in the power of entrepreneurship to drive economic growth and create positive change, and we are committed to helping them succeed in their ventures.
The UAE Chapter of the BRICS Business Council, chaired by H.E. Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem, Group Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of DP World, is one of nine national chapters in a 45-member council of senior business leaders from each BRICS country. Each chapter includes five members who guide nine sectoral working groups, which develop recommendations to enhance South-South economic cooperation. The Council meets biannually at Midterm and Annual Meetings, held alongside the BRICS Business Forum and Summit. These gatherings provide a platform for the Council to present its recommendations to BRICS leaders, with the aim of supporting economic cooperation, policy dialogue, and practical collaboration through its sectoral working groups.
INFRASTRUCTURE
A Unified Vision with Divergent Paths
The BRICS nations have made enhancing infrastructure a core tenet of their collective strategy, prioritizing improvements in transport and digital networks to boost trade, integration, and sustainability. This agenda aims to overcome inherited inefficiencies and address pressing environmental challenges. To fund these goals and reduce reliance on traditional Western-led lenders, the bloc established the New Development Bank (NDB) with a mandate to finance modern, resilient systems.
Despite this powerful, unified vision, significant divisions emerge in practice. A fundamental conflict exists in implementation styles—contrasting China’s state-led projects with other members’ preference for public-private partnerships—which creates considerable coordination hurdles for joint initiatives. This pattern of discord extends to the NDB itself, where varied national priorities lead to disagreements on project focus and governance. Consequently, the bloc’s progress is a continuous negotiation between its shared ambitions and the diverse strategic interests of its individual members.
TRADE & INVESTMENT
Forging Connectivity and Financial Autonomy
The BRICS nations are advancing a robust strategy to deepen economic integration by lowering transaction costs and eliminating procedural bottlenecks. Building on past successes, which saw intra-bloc trade rise by 56% to $614.8 billion by 2022, the focus is on enhancing market access and attracting investment.
Spurred by vulnerabilities exposed during the COVID-19 pandemic and geopolitical shocks, there is a new emphasis on supply chain sustainability and resilience. This includes initiatives for diversified sourcing, green logistics, and strategic stockpiling, with proposals like a BRICS Grain Exchange emerging from the 2024 Kazan Summit to stabilize food and energy supplies.
A core element of this strategy is driving trade efficiency through automation and regulatory alignment. Members are leveraging technology to slash border processing times, with pilot corridors using AI-driven risk assessments and electronic documents already cutting clearance times by up to 50%. While the goals are shared, implementation varies, with China piloting blockchain finance, Brazil advancing e-invoicing systems, and India deploying AI for risk profiling. This showcases a unified push for modernization through diverse, nationally-tailored technological solutions.
AGRIBUSINESS
Ensuring Food Security Through Innovation and Trade Reform
The BRICS bloc is actively advocating for a more equitable, rules-based global agricultural trade system, calling for significant reforms within the World Trade Organization (WTO). The group aims to dismantle trade-distorting subsidies, protectionist policies, and export restrictions to ensure fair market access. This push for reform is integrated with a strong commitment to sustainability, promoting resilient food systems and agricultural practices that preserve essential ecosystems and biodiversity.
This international stance is rooted in a core domestic priority: ensuring food security for their populations. This long-standing concern has been intensified by recent global supply shocks, climate change, and geopolitical volatility. To address these threats, BRICS champions innovation in agriculture, encouraging the adoption of smart farming, biotechnology, and AI to enhance yields and reduce waste. Despite facing distinct national challenges, such as water scarcity or land-use pressure, the members share a unified commitment to collaborative research, technology transfer, and building resilient infrastructure to secure long-term productivity and food sovereignty.
AVIATION
Forging Integration, Connectivity, and Sustainability
The BRICS nations are pursuing a comprehensive strategy to enhance their collective aviation capabilities by integrating their historically siloed value chains. The goal is to harmonize everything from airport infrastructure and aircraft manufacturing—like Brazil’s Embraer and China’s COMAC—to maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) services. This synergy is designed to boost efficiency and resilience. Complementing this is a drive to expand air connectivity, recognized as vital for facilitating trade, tourism, and people-to-people exchanges. Efforts are underway to increase direct flight routes and explore a multilateral open-skies framework, building on prior commitments.
A critical pillar of this agenda is sustainability. The bloc is united in its commitment to reducing aviation’s carbon emissions, with a strong focus on deploying Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAF), LCAF, and other cleaner energy pathways. Here, the bloc’s diversity is a strength: Brazil emphasizes biofuels research, China innovates with methanol-to-SAF technology, and India pioneers waste-to-fuel projects, showcasing varied national approaches to achieving a shared climate objective.
DIGITAL ECONOMY AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Forging Sovereignty in AI and Technology
The BRICS nations are advancing a strategic digital agenda aimed at shaping global tech governance and reducing reliance on Western innovation. The bloc is prioritizing frameworks for responsible AI to ensure fairness, transparency, and data sovereignty across its members, positioning itself to challenge existing norms and influence international standards. This initiative is closely tied to establishing digital trust through robust cybersecurity and data protection, creating an alternative governance model that respects national sovereignty, even as members navigate internal differences between state-led and more open approaches.
Underpinning this effort is a strong push for intra-BRICS technological collaboration to foster indigenous innovation and build resilient tech supply chains. Despite potential challenges regarding intellectual property rights and the role of the state, the collective goal is clear: to leverage technology as a key driver for sustainable development and strengthen South-South cooperation in a rapidly evolving digital landscape.
ENERGY, GREEN ECONOMY AND CLIMATE
Charting a Path to Sustainability and Circularity
The BRICS nations are undertaking a significant strategic pivot from their historical position as major global emitters toward a future built on decarbonization and regenerative economic models. This green transition is formalized through mid-century carbon-neutrality targets and clean-energy roadmaps, marking a collective commitment to climate sustainability. However, the pathways to this goal are diverse, reflecting national contexts: China aims for carbon neutrality by 2060, India targets net-zero by 2070, while Brazil and South Africa pledge neutrality by 2050, and Russia focuses on efficiency and carbon capture technologies.
Complementing this energy shift is a strong focus on transitioning from linear to circular and bioeconomic systems. This involves embedding waste reduction, materials reuse, and bio-based value chains into industrial policy. Here too, approaches vary, with China investing in eco-industrial parks, India expanding producer responsibility mandates to foster a circular market, and Brazil leveraging its leadership in the bioeconomy. Together, these initiatives represent a unified ambition for a sustainable future, pursued through tailored and innovative national strategies.
FINANCIAL SERVICES
Building a New Economic Order Through Finance and Integration
The BRICS bloc is actively working to reshape the global economic landscape by deepening financial and trade integration among its members to foster a more multipolar world order. A central pillar of this strategy is advancing innovative finance through the New Development Bank (NDB). The NDB aims to reduce reliance on traditional Western-led institutions and channel capital toward closing critical development gaps, particularly in infrastructure and sustainability. This initiative directly addresses calls from members like India and South Africa for fairer global access to financing.
Complementing this financial push, BRICS promotes deeper economic integration through practical measures such as encouraging trade in local currencies, enhancing supply chain cooperation, and strengthening South-South collaboration. However, the path to seamless integration is not without challenges. Significant internal differences in the members’ national trade policies and economic models present ongoing coordination hurdles that must be navigated to realize the bloc’s full potential.
MANUFACTURING
Forging Sustainable and Innovation-Led Growth
The BRICS nations are strategically reshaping their industrial base, moving away from historical reliance on resource-dependent growth toward more sustainable and productive economic models. This transformation is driven by a dual focus on value-added production and innovation-led competitiveness.
A core pillar is the push for sustainable production, marking a shift from raw material exports and high-emission manufacturing toward cleaner processes, circular economy practices, and green technologies. While the commitment to sustainability is shared, national strategies are tailored: China leads in industrial decarbonization, Brazil excels in agri-processing, and South Africa emphasizes a just transition.
Complementing this is a drive to boost productivity through innovation. To overcome a history of uneven R&D investment, the bloc now champions digital transformation, technology transfer, and localized innovation. Again, approaches vary, with China and India driving large-scale tech advancement while other members focus on strategic sectors like biotech and renewable energy, all aiming to enhance global competitiveness and build resilient, modern economies.
