The real test for BRICS remains whether it can deliver meaningful gains for Africa in financing, industrial cooperation, technology and trade, while giving African members a genuine role in shaping its agenda.

The 18th BRICS Summit held in New Delhi on 12–13 September 2026 concluded with the unanimous adoption of the New Delhi Declaration, a comprehensive 140-point document.[1] Chinese President Xi Jinping made his first visit to India in seven years. This was also his first visit since the 2020 Galwan Valley clashes, which brought India–China relations to their lowest point in decades.[2] Russian President Vladimir Putin also attended the summit. But the more consequential development for Africa received far less coverage than the Xi visit.

South Africa (a BRICS member since 2011), Ethiopia and Egypt (since January 2024) took part as full BRICS members with a vote, while Nigeria and Uganda participated as partner countries. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa utilised the platform to push for greater intra-BRICS trade, African industrialisation and African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) linked infrastructure, and to call for global oversight of artificial intelligence.[3] African presence at the summit does more than add numbers to the roster. It raises a larger question: what does non-alignment mean in a multipolar world, once African governments sit inside, rather than outside the platform that multipolar competition has produced?

For much of the post-colonial period, African governments sought to preserve manoeuvring room by avoiding formal alignment with competing great-power blocs. They tended to extract benefits from several external partners simultaneously. The New Delhi summit offered an opportunity to consider what that strategy means when African governments are themselves members of a platform dominated by India, China and Russia. This question is particularly consequential when two of those powers are simultaneously trying to stabilise their own bilateral relationship.

A Reset Conducted in Public

The New Delhi summit carried unusual symbolic weight. India hosted the BRICS summit again in 2026, five years after its previous chairmanship, at a moment when it was also trying to stabilise relations with China after a prolonged period of military tension, political distrust and economic de-risking. The October 2024 agreement on patrolling arrangements in Eastern Ladakh had already led to disengagement from the remaining friction points of 2020.[4] At the same time, diplomatic and military mechanisms for managing the boundary question have continued to operate.

Xi’s presence in New Delhi therefore carried significance beyond the optics of a leaders’ summit. In their bilateral meetings on the sidelines, Xi described the relationship as having reached a “new elevation”, building on the “restart” that began in Kazan in 2024 and its continuation at Tianjin in 2025. Prime Minister Narendra Modi invoked the “three mutuals”: mutual respect, mutual sensitivity and mutual interest. Both leaders agreed that “differences should not become disputes”.[5] The language was carefully calibrated but it also confirmed a long-held assumption: managed competition and institutionalised communication are once again becoming preferable to sustained confrontation, even if the strategic distrust underlying the relationship remains substantial.

For African governments, however, this recalibration matters elsewhere. It is taking place inside an institution in which African representation has expanded considerably since 2024. That makes the India–China relationship something African governments now help negotiate from within BRICS, not merely watch from outside.

From External Hedging to Internal Membership

Older conceptions of African non-alignment, from Bandung to the Cold War-era Non-Aligned Movement, were built on preserving sovereignty and policy autonomy. Maintaining distance from great-power blocs was the means, not the goal. In contemporary Africa, that logic has evolved. It is often described as active non-alignment or strategic hedging, in which governments seek different........

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