bricks continues to grow and grow every few weeks basically there's a new announcement of another country that has been admitted to Bricks which is a global South Le organization that now represents more than 40% of the global economy and over half of the world's population the latest news is that as of the 17th of January Nigeria has been accepted as a partner country in bricks which means it's on the path toward full membership in the near future this is very important because Nigeria has the largest population in Africa and it has the sixth largest population on Earth the Brazilian government announced this news because in 20125 Brazil is the chair of bricks there's a rotating chairmanship every single year in 2023 it was South Africa in 2024 it was Russia this year it is Brazil and Brazil has inly summarized the goals of bricks being two main goals strengthening South South cooperation and reforming Global governance so when you hear Western critics of bricks claim that this organization has so many internal problems and they don't have unity and they don't have a common goal Brazil has constantly stated what those two common goals are deepening South South cooperation economic and political integration of the forly colon ized countries of the global South which represent the global majority and the other goal reforming institutions of global governance that means reforming the United Nations and in particular the UN Security Council which is dominated by the Western powers and above all it means reforming International financial institutions in 2024 when Russia was chair of bricks it published a comprehensive report detailing it plans brics's plans to transform the international monetary and financial system I wrote a lengthy report about that and I have a video about that which I will link to in the description below summarizing the main points of this report but the gist of it is that bricks countries have a common economic goal in challenging the dominance of the US dollar and Washington's dominance over the International Financial system and they have proposed as an alter alternative to US dollar dominance what they call a multicurrency system through what is known as the bricks crossborder payment initiative they're already using their own National currencies to trade with each other trying to dollarize their trade and they're trying to create new institutions to dollarize the reserves they hold in their central banks holding new assets and also simply gold because many of these countries are afraid that the US could seize the dollar dominated asset asss they hold in their reserves which is what the US did to Russia and Venezuela and Iran and Afghanistan and they're even setting up exchanges for Commodities so they can settle trade imbalances in Commodities like gold or wheat or minerals and so many countries in the global South are trying to join bricks precisely because they want to create a new International Financial order one that is no longer completely dominated by the Western Colonial powers that colonized much of the world and still treat many Global South countries as neoc colonies today so now that Nigeria has been officially accepted into brics as a partner there are nine bricks partner countries and 10 full members of bricks for a total of 19 as of the 19th of January I created a map showing membership which you can see here and I regularly update this map which you can find the latest updated version on geopolitical economy. com the previous Edition which was announced just two weeks before Nigeria was admitted was Indonesia Indonesia has the world's fourth biggest population and the seventh largest economy and Indonesia's addition as a member of bricks was also deeply symbolic because Indonesia was one of the founders of the non-aligned movement and previously had hosted the bondon conference in 1955 which brought together countries in in Africa and Asia that were seeking independence from Western colonialism so many ways in the 21st century you can see brics as following in the footsteps of the non-aligned movement and the bondon conference of the 20th century brics is the 21st century version of that and again at the core of brics's international movement is the attempt to deize the International Financial system to create alternatives to the dominance of the US dollar so the 10 full members of brics are now Brazil Russia India China and South Africa after which brics is named they founded this organization back in 2009 as brick and then South Africa joined in 2010 and then five new members were added Egypt Ethiopia Indonesia Iran and the UAE they joined in 2024 and then now there are nine bricks Partners as of 2025 those include bellarus Bolivia Cuba Kazakhstan Malaysia Nigeria Thailand Uganda and usbekistan if you look at a list of the top 20 most populous countries on Earth 10 of them are now in bricks including Nigeria has the sixth largest population which was over 230 million people as of 2024 that makes it the most populous country on the African continent so if you you combine together the population of all 19 bricks members and partners together they represent more than 4. 3 billion people which represents 54.
6% of the entire population of the world this is according to data from the international monetary fund which I used here to create these charts there are different sources on the size of the world population that differ a little bit of course but I typically use the IMF data because despite all of the many problems with the IMF as an institution its data is publicly available and very useful and it's also updated very regularly so the IMF had the world population in 2024 at 7. 92 billion people the bricks countries are now 4. 3 billion people that means they represent 54.
6% of the entire world population the addition of Nigeria into bricks is also important because Nigeria has one of the fastest growing populations on Earth India one of the founding members of bricks which has the world's largest population has the fastest growing population from 2024 to 2037 it's expected that there will be 147 million people born in India but in second place is Nigeria with 65 million people born in Nigeria in the next decade and a half or so and if you look at the list of the top 10 countries with the fastest growing populations not not as a percentage but as a gross number half of those countries are now in bricks India Nigeria Ethiopia Indonesia and Egypt so bricks cannot be ignored it represents the majority of the world population and Nigeria in particular is pretty symbolic because the largest city in Nigeria Lagos is expected to emerge as the world's top mega City by the end of the 21st Century in fact by 201100 people in the African continent will represent 38% of the world population whereas today people in Africa represent 18% of the entire world population and also today people in Asia represent 60% of the world population their percentage of the world population is expected to fall to 45% in 201100 so in other words by the end of the 21st century more than eight out of every 10 people in the world will live in Asia or Africa and Bricks as an organization represents these people who are the global majority they they already are today the global majority and their majority will continue to increase over time yet unfortunately many Western governments and politicians and pundits and academics and intellectuals they still think the entire world revolves around them around the West even even though the West only represents about 13 or 14% of the world population and it's not just the population it's also the economy because many of the bricks countries have some of the fastest growing economies on Earth of course China is the world's number one economy when you measure its GDP at purchasing power parody and China is the world's industrial superpower and if you combine together all of the 19 bricks members and partners together their GDP represents 42.
