🇳🇬🌍 It's only a matter of time before Nigeria becomes a full member of BRICS, says former vice-presidential candidate

🗣 "Our partnership with BRICS will change a lot of things," Dr. Emmanuel Chukwuka Johnson, a former vice-presidential candidate in Nigeria's 2023 election, told Sputnik Africa on the sidelines of the First Ministerial Conference of the #RussiaAfrica Africa Partnership Forum in Sochi, Russia.

The politician believes that Nigeria's membership in BRICS would positively impact the country's economic development by changing the way transactions and businesses are conducted.

According to him, BRICS membership would help Nigeria strengthen its currency, the naira, by reducing its dependence on the US dollar and providing more opportunities for trade with other countries.

🗣 "In fact, there are so many other benefits that will come, and Nigerians are fully ready for it because we want that alternative," Dr. Johnson said.

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Bolivia has received an invitation to become a BRICS partner state, Foreign Minister Celinda Sosa told TASS.

“We are really very grateful to the president of brotherly Russia for supporting Bolivia's participation in BRICS. Today we received an invitation from the Russian foreign minister. We were invited to join BRICS as a partner state. We have responded positively to this invitation," she said on the sidelines of the 29th UN Climate Change Conference (UNFCCC COP 29) in Baku.

According to the top diplomat, Cuba has also been accepted as a BRICS partner state.

🇷🇺🌍 A realistic path forward for carbon markets lies within like-minded unions, such as BRICS, a Russian official says

🗣 "The most realistic way is to create carbon markets within the framework of like-minded alliances – the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, BRICS. The current COP–29 conference provides a good basis to lay future economic alliances to combat global warming," Special Envoy of the Russian President for relations with International Organizations for the Achievement of Sustainable Development Goals Boris Titov said.

Speaking on the sidelines of the 29th session of the UN Climate Change Conference (COP-29) in Baku, Azerbaijan, he highlighted the need for government leadership in driving a single carbon market, which he sees as essential for incentivizing private sector emissions reductions.

Titov argued that achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) "as a whole world" is impossible due to the "politicized use" of multilateralism for "unilateral benefits." He pointed to Russia's progress on many SDGs, noting that Russian companies could share environmental, social, and governance practices, but face political obstacles. Therefore, he suggested that Russia focus on regional cooperation groups and "communities of 'friends with common views'."

He also noted that the climate agenda should deliver economic benefits, not just costs, and called for a clear agreement on a mandatory carbon market to commercialize private sector emissions reductions.

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🎙 Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s interview with Marina Kim for the New World project (Moscow, November 14, 2024)

Key talking points:

#InternationalAffairs

• Our main task now is to achieve all the goals formulated by President Vladimir Putin. You are aware of the West’s expectations. They are speculating about stopping the hostilities at a certain line and coordinating a truce, so that 10 years from now they will decide who Crimea and Donbass belong to. This is coffee cup reading. I won’t engage in it. We have our tasks, and we will fulfil them.

• Our job is to assert and promote Russia’s interests in keeping with its Constitution as well as the objectives defined by President Vladimir Putin. This goes beyond Ukraine and applies to Russia’s Foreign Policy Concept in general.

#USA

• Washington can’t allow Russia to prove that it is a strong player and undermine the West’s reputation. They don’t care about Ukraine. They only care about their reputation. They decided that Ukraine should have a government they like and didn’t expect anyone to protest. Russia? It’s a big country but it must be brought down a peg. That is what this is about rather than the future of the Ukrainian people. They don’t care about people.

• Sanctions have been imposed on over half of the world’s countries, even if they are not as drastic as those that have been adopted against Russia, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Iran and Venezuela. The real reason behind the West’s current rage is that China is rapidly and confidently surging ahead of the United States.

• We can see through what the Americans want. Sitting somewhere overseas, they believe that they are beyond the reach, while leaving it to Europe to overcome the challenges they face in terms of encouraging and arming Ukraine to fight Russia, as well as footing the bill for the Middle East tragedy.

#Eurasia4You

• God gave us one continent, and we share it. This continent possesses immense and, in fact, the biggest natural resources, while several millennia-old civilisations inhabit it. Failing to benefit from these competitive advantages would be a mistake. This is what the idea of building a Greater Eurasian Partnership is all about, and the EAEU, SCO and ASEAN have already taken the first steps in this direction. We are establishing ties and promoting dialogue. If we succeed in fulfilling the plans we have, the Greater Eurasian Partnership will offer a solid foundation and serve as an economic and transport backbone for what President Vladimir Putin called a new Eurasian security architecture.

• There is a clear understanding that the Eurasian security architecture, just like the Greater Eurasian Partnership, must be open to all countries and continents, including Eurasia’s western part, even if so far the latter has been trying, as if by inertia, to ensure its interests within a Euro-Atlantic security concept instead of opting for the Eurasian framework, which would be natural and reasonable, considering the geography factor. This is their way of saying that they do not intend to do anything without the United States.

#BRICS

🌐 BRICS is about the new world order that is based on the main principle of the UN Charter – the sovereign equality of states.

• BRICS has no intention of dividing the world. It wants to bring together countries that desire closer relations so that they can live on the land they got from God and their ancestors just as they used to, as great civilisations.

#Africa

🌍 Decolonisation has taken place, in a broad sense. But being able to actually manage one’s freedom and resources is a different story. This is where neo-colonialism comes to the fore.

• The First Ministerial Conference of the Russia-Africa Partnership Forum in Sochi, and the Russia-Africa Summit in St Petersburg in 2023 clearly put into perspective the trends that could be called Africa’s second awakening.

🇪🇬🇿🇦 Egypt and South Africa discuss enhancing BRICS cooperation

This came during a meeting in Cairo between Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and South African Minister of International Relations and Cooperation Ronald Lamola, the Egyptian leader's office said in a statement Thursday.

🗣 "The meeting reviewed ways to enhance and expand bilateral cooperation in all fields, especially in light of the two countries' membership in the BRICS and their active role regionally and at the level of the African continent," the presidency said in a statement.

Lamola conveyed to President el-Sisi a message from his South African counterpart Cyril Ramaphosa, expressing his appreciation to the Egyptian leader and his keenness to continue developing relations with Pretoria, the statement said.

For his part, President el-Sisi stressed that Cairo "holds in high esteem the historical brotherly relations that bind the two countries and peoples".

The BRICS group of emerging economies, founded in 2006 by Russia, China, India and Brazil, with South Africa joining in 2011, welcomed Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia to its ranks in January this year.

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🇷🇺🌐 The growing role of BRICS reinforces the importance of the Global South, Russian MFA says

🗣 "At the moment, the potential is largely distributed in favor of new centers of power, and new centers are recruited in Asia, Africa, America and the Middle East," Russian Foreign Ministry’s Ambassador-at-Large and BRICS sous-sherpa Pavel Knyazev said on the sidelines of the Research Conference "The Future of Diplomacy and Diplomatic Services."

Earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the role and authority of the BRICS association in the world continue to strengthen. He noted Russia advocates for the formation of a fair world order without illegitimate sanctions and restrictions.

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Interview: China plays pivotal role in global climate action, says former UN official

BAKU, Nov. 15 (Xinhua) -- China is now an indispensable nation for global climate efforts, former UN Under-Secretary-General Erik Solheim told Xinhua in a recent interview.

The 29th session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP29) commenced Monday in Baku, Azerbaijan, aiming to bolster climate finance, carbon trading, and the global transition from fossil fuels. The conference will run until Nov. 22.

Solheim, also the former UN Environment Executive Director, shared his views on China's current role in fighting climate change amid ongoing global changes.

"China is now an indispensable nation for global climate efforts," Solheim said, adding that it is essentially "impossible for the world to go green without China."

China plays an important role in the global green energy transition, accounting for 60 percent or more of global production in key green sectors, including solar, wind, and hydropower, as well as electric cars and batteries, he said.

He also stressed the need for necessary investments to tackle climate challenges, saying multilateral platforms, like BRICS, are increasingly significant for addressing climate change.

"BRICS has become very important since that's an avenue for the Global South to come together and lead the world," he said, adding that the initiative will move to countries of the Global South.

"The 'Belt and Road Initiative' has recently turned into a major vehicle for green investment in the world, in solar, wind, hydropower and green corridors," said the former UN official.

To illustrate the significant impact of Belt and Road projects, he cited the Chinese-built Padma Bridge project in Bangladesh.

Completed by China Railway Major Bridge Engineering Group Co., Ltd. and opened to the public in June 2022, the bridge crosses the Padma River, connecting southern Bangladesh to Dhaka. Solheim expects this infrastructure project to boost Bangladesh's economy by 1 percent. ■

2024-11-15 16:09:01
[Source: Xinhua] [Full Text]

❗️Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand have become BRICS partners, the Russian Foreign Ministry reports

🗣 "The BRICS summit in Kazan demonstrated the aspiration of the global majority to create a just world order, reform global institutions and build equitable economic relations. A solid package of agreements was reached on trade, investment, artificial intelligence, energy and climate, and logistics," Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Aleksandr Pankin told a joint meeting of APEC foreign and trade ministers.

The BRICS partner status denotes an alternative to full membership, allowing participating nations to engage with BRICS but without voting rights. Partner status will be "as close to membership as possible," Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov hinted earlier this year.


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