Addis Ababa, September 15, 2026 (FMC) — For Ethiopia, the significance of its place in BRICS is not measured only by the opportunities the grouping can open for the country. It is also about what Ethiopia can bring to a partnership whose economic weight spans vast markets, capital, technology, energy and industrial capacity.
That proposition was visible in Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s intervention at the 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi, where Ethiopia’s economic transformation was presented not as an isolated national project, but as part of a wider opportunity to build productive partnerships across the Global South.
One of the clearest examples came from agriculture.
Ethiopia’s move from dependence on imported wheat toward self-sufficiency has altered the position from which it approaches discussions on food security and trade. In speaking about the proposed BRICS grain exchange, the Prime Minister placed Ethiopia on both sides of the equation: not simply as a country seeking food supplies, but as a producer with the potential to participate as a supplier.
That shift matters beyond wheat.
It reflects a broader effort to build an economy capable of producing more, processing more and participating more meaningfully in regional and global markets. The same thinking is emerging in pharmaceutical manufacturing, renewable energy, minerals and an expanding industrial base.
The proposition Ethiopia brought to BRICS was therefore larger than the exchange of individual commodities.
Africa possesses some of the resources increasingly sought by the global economy. BRICS countries bring substantial pools of capital, technology and markets. The opportunity, as Abiy framed it, is to bring those strengths together in ways that create greater value where resources are found.
That is where the question of value addition becomes central.
For resource-rich African economies, the challenge has long extended beyond possessing minerals or other natural assets. The larger economic prize lies in transforming those resources into products, industries, jobs, technology and productive capacity. The energy transition, advanced manufacturing and digital economy are all increasing demand for critical minerals, while renewable energy is creating new possibilities for countries able to combine natural resources with industrial capability.
Ethiopia is seeking to position itself within that changing equation.
Its proposition is not simply that the country has resources. It is that those resources can become part of a wider productive ecosystem involving investment, technology, manufacturing and access to markets.
The same logic runs through Ethiopia’s expanding pharmaceutical manufacturing ambitions. Building domestic production capacity in health, as Abiy noted in his address, is part of a wider lesson drawn from the pandemic: resilience depends not only on access to products, but increasingly on the capacity to produce them.
That principle cuts across the sectors Ethiopia raised at BRICS.
Food security requires production. Health security requires manufacturing capacity. The energy transition requires resources and technology. Industrialization requires investment and markets. Digital transformation requires infrastructure, skills and technological capability.
Seen together, these are not disconnected ambitions. They form part of Ethiopia’s attempt to move from an economy principally defined by development needs toward one increasingly capable of supplying products, resources, services and opportunities into a much larger economic system.
BRICS offers a particularly significant setting for that ambition because of the scale and diversity represented within the grouping.
Ethiopia is looking at a combination that can be difficult to assemble elsewhere: major markets, investment capital, technological capabilities, energy producers, industrial economies and resource-rich countries brought into one expanding South-South economic framework.
For Ethiopia, the question is how those complementarities can be turned into productive relationships.
Its mineral resources can meet industrial demand. Its renewable-energy potential can support a more productive economy. Its agricultural transformation can create new opportunities in food production and trade. Its industrial base can expand through technology and investment. Its growing domestic market can itself become part of a larger commercial equation.
This is also where the country’s wider connectivity agenda acquires economic meaning.
Ethiopia has already pointed to assets that extend beyond its domestic market: Ethiopian Airlines links African economies with the wider world; Ethiopian electricity is increasingly serving neighbouring countries; and Addis Ababa hosts the headquarters of the African Union.
These are not merely national assets. They can become platforms through which trade, investment, technology and production circulate across borders.
The ambition, ultimately, is to ensure that Africa’s natural and human resources do not remain disconnected from the capital, technology and markets capable of turning them into greater economic value.
That is a particularly important proposition at a time when global supply chains are being reconsidered, industrial capacity is becoming a strategic asset and access to critical resources is increasingly intertwined with economic and geopolitical influence.
Ethiopia’s BRICS engagement therefore points toward a different way of viewing its economic relationship with the grouping.
It is not simply about what Ethiopia can import, borrow or receive. It is about what it can produce, supply, build and develop in partnership with other economies of the Global South.
From wheat to pharmaceuticals, from minerals to renewable energy, and from industrial production to emerging technologies, the underlying message is increasingly clear: Ethiopia wants its economic transformation to be part of the architecture of a changing global economy—not something taking place at its margins.
And for Africa more broadly, the proposition carries a larger question: whether the continent’s resources can become the foundation of industries and value chains on the continent itself, with African countries participating not only at the beginning of global supply chains as resource providers, but further along them as producers, manufacturers and markets.
That is where Ethiopia’s BRICS proposition reaches beyond the summit itself.
The opportunity is not merely to find buyers for what Africa produces or investors for what Africa possesses. It is to build partnerships in which resources meet technology, capital meets production, production meets markets—and economic value increasingly remains where it is created.