Addis Ababa, September 15, 2026 (FMC) — Ethiopia’s participation in the 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi has underscored a broader shift in the country’s engagement with the emerging architecture of global cooperation: less about seeking a place at the table and increasingly about using that place to advance African priorities, economic interests and practical solutions to shared challenges.
The two-day summit, held on September 12–13 under India’s chairship, brought together the expanded 11-member BRICS grouping as it seeks to strengthen its role in global economic governance, development cooperation and the representation of emerging and developing countries.
Leaders adopted the New Delhi Declaration, reaffirming their commitment to a more representative international order, reform of multilateral institutions and inclusive, development-oriented cooperation.
For Ethiopia, the summit provided a platform to articulate a position that cut across politics, finance, trade, technology, production and climate action.
Rather than approaching BRICS solely as a source of financing or market access, Ethiopia presented itself as a country with productive capacity, strategic connectivity, African institutional reach and concrete proposals for how the partnership can deliver greater value to developing economies.
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s interventions were anchored in three interconnected needs: a stronger voice in global decision-making, greater access to development finance and wider access to markets.
That framework gave Ethiopia’s participation a distinctly practical character.
From representation to influence
On global governance, Ethiopia sought to connect BRICS’ long-standing call for a more representative international system with Africa’s established position on reform of the United Nations Security Council.
Abiy reaffirmed Ethiopia’s adherence to the common African position adopted through the African Union and called for BRICS’ support for sustained action toward stronger African representation.
The argument was not simply that Africa should be represented for the sake of representation. Ethiopia’s position is that institutions responsible for decisions affecting the developing world must better reflect the countries and populations most affected by those decisions.
This places Ethiopia’s BRICS engagement within a wider Global South push for changes in the structures of global governance—an issue that the New Delhi Declaration itself linked to the pursuit of a more representative and fairer international order.
For Addis Ababa, the significance of BRICS therefore extends beyond economics. The grouping offers another platform through which Ethiopia can work with major emerging economies on questions of international governance while advancing a common African position.
From access to finance to shaping its architecture
The economic dimension of Ethiopia’s participation was equally direct.
Ethiopia entered BRICS in 2024 and subsequently applied for membership in the New Development Bank. The bank’s Board of Governors approved Ethiopia’s application in December 2025, while Ethiopia’s ratification process was being advanced domestically.
At the New Delhi Summit, Ethiopia went beyond seeking access to the institution. It proposed ways of increasing its development impact.
Abiy called for greater NDB lending in national currencies, arguing that excessive exposure to exchange-rate movements can turn otherwise sound development projects into fiscal burdens.
He also proposed a stronger operational presence for the bank in Africa and offered Addis Ababa as a potential location for an NDB office serving the continent.
That proposal is significant because it positions Ethiopia not simply as a prospective recipient of development finance, but as a potential platform for extending BRICS-backed financial cooperation across Africa.
Markets, payments and the cost of connectivity
Ethiopia also brought the question of market access into the centre of its BRICS agenda.
Abiy called for practical steps toward faster, more affordable and secure cross-border payments, linking financial connectivity directly to trade, investment and the ability of smaller businesses to enter new markets.
This dovetailed with the broader direction of the New Delhi Summit, where BRICS leaders endorsed greater cooperation in trade and financial mechanisms, including the use of local currencies and stronger payment connectivity.
For Ethiopia, this is particularly relevant to an economy seeking to expand exports, attract investment and reduce the costs associated with international transactions.
The emphasis is therefore shifting from whether markets are available to whether businesses can actually reach them efficiently.
Ethiopia’s economic transformation enters the BRICS conversation
Ethiopia also used the summit to demonstrate how its own economic transformation intersects with the wider BRICS agenda.
In his first intervention, Abiy highlighted Ethiopia’s movement from dependence on imported wheat toward self-sufficiency and its intention to approach the proposed BRICS grain exchange as both a producer and supplier.
The same argument extended to pharmaceuticals, where Ethiopia is expanding domestic manufacturing as part of a broader effort to build resilience through production rather than dependence.
The message is consequential: Ethiopia is seeking to participate in BRICS value chains not only as a consumer of goods, capital and technology, but increasingly as a producer capable of supplying regional and wider markets.
The country similarly presented its minerals, renewable-energy potential and expanding industrial base as areas where African resources, BRICS capital, technology and markets can be brought together to create greater value within producing economies.
Technology as another arena of contribution
Technology provided another dimension to Ethiopia’s positioning.
The country presented its digital public infrastructure—including digital identification, payments and data exchange—as part of its broader transformation, while proposing deeper BRICS cooperation around artificial intelligence that better reflects Africa’s languages, communities and knowledge systems.
Abiy specifically linked that ambition to Ethiopia’s Maddamer University of Artificial Intelligence and argued that Africa should participate in building the next generation of AI rather than simply becoming a market for technologies developed elsewhere.
That position fits into the summit’s wider emphasis on innovation, digital infrastructure and technological cooperation.
Sea access framed as an economic necessity
One of Ethiopia’s most consequential economic messages at the summit concerned access to the sea.
In his second speech, Abiy described sea access first and foremost as an economic imperative, linking it to Ethiopia’s size, growth and need for reliable and diversified international trade routes.
The emphasis was on reducing trade costs, strengthening economic resilience and advancing shared prosperity, with Ethiopia reiterating that it would pursue the objective through peaceful and negotiated arrangements.
This framing places the issue within the same economic logic Ethiopia brought to BRICS more broadly: connectivity is not an isolated geopolitical question but a determining factor in the cost and competitiveness of trade.
From Ethiopia’s interests to Africa’s wider agenda
Another defining feature of Ethiopia’s summit participation was its effort to connect national priorities with continental ones.
Ethiopia called for stronger consultation between BRICS and the African Union so that engagement with Africa is better aligned with Agenda 2063.
Its argument was reinforced by Addis Ababa’s unique institutional position as the headquarters of the African Union, alongside Ethiopia’s role in continental aviation through Ethiopian Airlines and its expanding electricity connections with neighbouring economies.
In this framing, Ethiopia’s value to BRICS is partly derived from its ability to serve as a bridge between the bloc and wider African institutions, markets and development priorities.
Climate diplomacy moves toward COP32
Climate action provided another area where Ethiopia sought to convert its own national experience into a wider BRICS agenda.
Abiy cited Ethiopia’s Green Legacy Initiative, which he said has planted 56 billion seedlings over eight years, alongside expansion of renewable energy, electric mobility and more resilient agriculture, cities and infrastructure.
The significance extends beyond the initiative itself.
With Ethiopia preparing to host COP32 in Addis Ababa in 2027, the country used the BRICS platform to seek stronger support for an outcome-oriented climate conference focused on adaptation, practical solutions and climate finance that does not deepen the debt burdens of developing countries.
Ethiopia also proposed a BRICS coordinating track on the road to COP32, creating a potential mechanism through which the bloc could translate its climate priorities into areas of agreement before the conference.
The proposal gives Ethiopia an opportunity to carry the BRICS conversation from New Delhi to Addis Ababa next year.
A different kind of BRICS membership
Taken together, Ethiopia’s interventions at the New Delhi Summit reveal a broader trajectory in its BRICS engagement.
The country joined the grouping only in 2024, but by the 2026 summit it was not presenting membership merely as an opportunity to gain access to existing structures.
It was putting forward proposals on how those structures could work better—from development finance in national currencies and an expanded African role for the New Development Bank to cross-border payments, African representation in global institutions, BRICS-AU coordination and cooperation ahead of COP32.
That does not mean every Ethiopian proposal emerging from the summit has already become a BRICS decision. Rather, the significance lies in the range of issues Ethiopia has succeeded in bringing into the bloc’s wider conversation and in the way those issues connect national priorities with the interests of the wider Global South.
The New Delhi Summit also demonstrated the scale of the platform Ethiopia has entered. The expanded BRICS now spans 11 member states across Africa, Asia and Latin America and accounts for roughly half of the world’s population, around 40 percent of global GDP and more than a quarter of global trade.
For Ethiopia, therefore, BRICS is becoming more than another multilateral forum.
It is a platform through which the country can pursue voice in global governance, finance for development, access to markets, technology partnerships, African economic interests and climate diplomacy—while simultaneously offering assets of its own.
The test after New Delhi will be whether those proposals translate into institutions, investments, partnerships and practical cooperation.
That is ultimately where Ethiopia’s BRICS participation will be measured: not simply by what Ethiopia said at the summit, but by what its engagement helps make possible after the summit.