THE Brics summit opens in Johannesburg, South Africa, today in what is being labelled as an opportunity to radically change the world’s balance of forces. 

Leaders from the Brics economic bloc of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa will hold three days of meetings in Johannesburg’s Sandton financial district.

The attendance of Chinese President Xi Jinping, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa underlines the importance of the summit.

Russian President Vladimir Putin will appear on a video link after his travel to South Africa was complicated by an International Criminal Court arrest warrant against him over the war in Ukraine. 

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will represent Russia in person at the summit. 

Leaders representing 71 countries of the Global South have also been invited to attend as observers, with sideline meetings today and Thursday sandwiching Wednesday’s main formal meeting.

All are likely to concentrate on more co-operation between countries in the Global South amid rising discontent over the dominance of the United States and its allies in global institutions.

The summit will discuss the proposed expansion of the Brics bloc — South African officials have said that more than 20 countries, including Saudi Arabia, Argentina, Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Indonesia and the United Arab Emirates have formally applied to join. 

Any move toward the inclusion of the Saudis, the world’s second-biggest oil producer, in an economic bloc with Russia and China has already drawn the ire of the US, which has a record of interfering in the bilateral relationships that nations choose to forge.

“If Saudi Arabia were to enter Brics, it will bring extraordinary importance to this grouping,” said Talmiz Ahmad, India's former ambassador to Saudi Arabia.

Even an agreement in principle to expand Brics, which already has 3.24 billion people and a GDP of over $26 trillion (£20tn), would represent an important shift in the global balance of power away from the dominance of the G7 bloc of leading industrial nations.

The Brics countries also intend to use the summit to make progress in shifting from a reliance on the US dollar as the world’s currency for international trade, including on oil: the bloc’s leaders have already signalled their intention to encourage a greater focus on the use of local currencies for trade.