ABSTRACT
The importance of South Africa's membership in Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) was underlined by Jacob Zuma at the Ufa Summit. Many in South Africa regard joining the BRICS as a triumph of foreign policy, but some, especially in the academic community, disagree. On the eve of the BRICS summit in Durban in 2013, the South African government designated the Human Science Research Council as the incubator of the South African BRICS Think Tank. The development of sectoral cooperation and, in particular, the establishment and operationalization of the BRICS financial institutions takes time and effort. South Africa is "eagerly looking forward to working together with the fellow BRICS countries" to implement the Strategy for BRICS Economic Partnership to provide a platform for "further intensifying our economic cooperation, in all identified priority sectors". South Africa's BRICS experts believed that the summit helped broaden the country's focus from mainly economic cooperation to development cooperation.
