Addis Ababa, September 15, 2026 (FMC) — Ethiopia entered the 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi as one of the grouping’s members, but its intervention at the two-day leaders’ meeting carried a much larger ambition: to use its place in an expanding coalition of emerging economies to strengthen Africa’s voice in the institutions that shape the international order.
Rather than treating BRICS membership as an end in itself, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s interventions placed Ethiopia within a wider argument about how global power, representation and economic opportunity should evolve at a time of profound international transition.
At the heart of that argument was a simple proposition: an increasingly multipolar world requires institutions capable of reflecting the countries and peoples whose economic and demographic weight has grown far beyond the structures created decades ago.
For Ethiopia, that question begins with representation.
In his second address to the summit, Prime Minister Abiy called for every BRICS member and partner to have a meaningful role in the grouping’s cooperation, arguing that its unity is strongest when every voice is heard.
He then extended that principle to the global institutional system, placing Africa’s long-standing demand for greater representation at the United Nations Security Council squarely within the BRICS conversation.
Ethiopia’s position, he made clear, remains anchored in the common African position agreed through the African Union.
The significance lies not simply in reiterating Africa’s call for Security Council reform, but in where Ethiopia chose to advance it.
BRICS has grown into a broader political and economic platform bringing together countries from different regions, political systems and development experiences. For Ethiopia, that diversity creates an opportunity to connect Africa’s longstanding demands for a more representative international system with a grouping increasingly engaged in debates over global governance.
Abiy therefore called on BRICS to move beyond general support for African representation and turn that support into sustained action.
It is a proposition that places Ethiopia’s BRICS engagement within a much longer African diplomatic struggle: the effort to ensure that the institutions governing international peace, security and global decision-making reflect contemporary realities rather than the balance of power of another era.
Yet Ethiopia’s approach at New Delhi was broader than Security Council reform alone.
In his first summit address, Abiy argued that the strength of BRICS lies in what each country brings to the partnership and that countries do not need to become more alike to pursue a common purpose.
That framing offered a window into how Ethiopia sees the expanded grouping: not as a bloc requiring political uniformity, but as a space where countries with different histories, interests and systems can build practical areas of cooperation.
For Africa, this distinction matters.
The continent has often confronted an international system in which decisions affecting its development, security, financing and future are made through institutions where its representation remains limited.
Ethiopia’s intervention sought to place that structural imbalance alongside the wider transformation represented by BRICS.
Its message was therefore not simply that Africa deserves a seat.
It was that Africa should have a stronger voice in shaping the rules, institutions and partnerships that will define the next phase of global development.
That ambition was also visible in Ethiopia’s call for stronger consultation between BRICS and the African Union.
Addis Ababa’s position as the headquarters of the continental organization gives Ethiopia an unusual diplomatic vantage point within BRICS. In his first address,
PM Abiy argued that closer consultation between the two institutions would help align engagement with Africa more effectively with Agenda 2063, the continent’s long-term development framework.
That proposal adds another dimension to Ethiopia’s diplomacy at New Delhi.
The question is no longer only how Africa can gain greater representation within global institutions, but how the continent can build more coherent relationships with emerging centres of economic and political influence.
For Ethiopia, BRICS offers one such platform.
The broader economic arguments advanced by the Prime Minister reinforced the same political logic.
Ethiopia linked its call for a stronger voice with proposals on development finance, trade, technology, production, climate action and connectivity.
In other words, representation was presented not as an abstract diplomatic objective, but as a means of securing institutions and partnerships capable of producing tangible development outcomes.
This is where Ethiopia’s three-part framework of voice, finance and markets becomes significant.
Voice concerns who gets to influence the rules.
Finance concerns whether developing economies can access capital on terms that protect productive investment and withstand external shocks.
Markets concern whether goods, services, people and money can move efficiently enough for economic opportunity to become real.
Taken together, the three form a broader Ethiopian proposition for a changing global economy: greater representation should lead to institutions that work better for developing countries, while stronger financial and commercial links should translate that institutional change into development.
Ethiopia’s argument also reflects its own changing position.
The country arrived at the summit not only as an advocate for Africa but as an economy presenting its own evolving capabilities—from agricultural production and pharmaceutical manufacturing to digital public infrastructure, artificial intelligence, renewable energy, industrial development and continental connectivity.
That combination allowed Ethiopia to speak simultaneously from two positions: as part of Africa’s collective diplomatic voice and as an individual country seeking to deepen its role in emerging global economic networks.
The distinction is important.
Ethiopia was not presenting Africa merely as a recipient of new international partnerships. It was making the case for an Africa that can contribute production, resources, markets, institutions, knowledge and connectivity to the emerging architecture of global cooperation.
The same outlook shaped Ethiopia’s position on global institutions.
A reformed multilateral order, from this perspective, is not simply about adding countries to existing structures. It is about making international cooperation more capable of responding to today’s economic, demographic, technological and geopolitical realities.
That is also where BRICS itself becomes consequential.
The grouping’s expansion has created a larger platform through which countries of the Global South can discuss economic cooperation and the future of global governance. But its influence will ultimately depend on whether its diversity can be translated into practical cooperation and whether its calls for reform can move beyond declarations.
Ethiopia’s interventions in New Delhi placed it squarely within that test.
By advocating sustained action on African representation, stronger BRICS–African Union consultation and a more responsive global institutional system, Ethiopia sought to make its new membership part of a wider continental and Global South agenda.
The significance of the New Delhi engagement, therefore, extends beyond Ethiopia’s place within BRICS.
It points to a country seeking to use an expanding international platform to connect its national transformation with Africa’s broader aspirations and with the global movement toward a more representative multilateral system.
For Ethiopia, the strategic opportunity is no longer simply to have a voice at an influential table.
It is to use that voice to help shape what the table becomes.
By Mesafint Brlie