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IBSA still matters because it gives India, Brazil, and South Africa a smaller democratic platform inside a larger, more diverse BRICS environment. While BRICS is useful for scale, finance, and Global South bargaining power, IBSA gives the three countries a place to coordinate around democracy, development, reform of global institutions, and practical South-South cooperation. The result is not a rival to BRICS, but a democratic core that can make BRICS development debates more balanced, credible, and connected to social priorities.
Why Does IBSA Still Matter Inside BRICS?
IBSA matters inside BRICS because the IBSA countries share a political identity that BRICS as a whole does not: India, Brazil, and South Africa are large, plural, multiethnic democracies from Asia, Latin America, and Africa. That shared profile gives them a distinctive role when BRICS discusses development finance, global governance reform, trade, climate, debt, food security, and institutional representation. IBSA’s importance in BRICS is strongest when the agenda requires democratic legitimacy, cross-regional trust, and a development vocabulary that goes beyond great-power competition.
The question is relevant because BRICS has changed. It is no longer only the original grouping of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. The bloc has expanded, and official BRICS communications now describe a much larger formation that includes new members admitted from 2024 onwards, making the group more influential but also more politically varied.
That expansion increases the value of a smaller democratic caucus. In a large forum, consensus can become broad but thin. IBSA gives India, Brazil, and South Africa a way to refine positions before entering larger BRICS discussions, especially where they need to defend the interests of developing countries without being absorbed into the strategic priorities of larger powers.
The IBSA Countries Share a Three-Continent Identity
IBSA was formalised in Brasília on June 6, 2003, when the Foreign Ministers of India, Brazil, and South Africa adopted the Brasília Declaration. South Africa’s government describes the forum as a trilateral developmental initiative created to promote South-South cooperation and exchange, with objectives that include common positions on international issues, trade and investment opportunities, poverty alleviation, social development, and cooperation across areas such as agriculture, climate change, culture, education, energy, health, science, technology, tourism, and transport.
The design was deliberate. India brought the weight of a major Asian democracy and a long history of non-alignment and development diplomacy. Brazil brought Latin America’s largest economy and a tradition of coalition-building across trade, climate, and social policy debates. South Africa brought post-apartheid democratic legitimacy, African continental reach, and a foreign policy language centred on equality, representation, and negotiated solutions.
Together, the three countries created a forum that was neither Western-led nor authoritarian-led. That middle position still matters. IBSA can speak the language of sovereignty and development while also claiming democratic experience, electoral politics, constitutionalism, civil society engagement, and multicultural governance as part of its identity.
A Forum Built on Similarity, Not Sameness
IBSA is not powerful because the three countries are identical. They have different economies, security concerns, domestic political coalitions, and regional priorities. India’s strategic environment is shaped heavily by Asia and the Indian Ocean. Brazil’s foreign policy often moves through South America, the Atlantic, agribusiness, climate, and multilateral trade. South Africa carries both national and continental expectations as one of Africa’s most visible diplomatic actors.
The forum works because those differences sit on top of a shared structural position. All three are large developing democracies that want more voice in global institutions. All three seek room to industrialise, modernise infrastructure, expand social inclusion, and shape rules rather than simply receive them. IBSA gives them a mechanism to turn that overlap into diplomatic coordination.
The Democratic Core Is a Strategic Asset
The phrase ‘democratic core’ does not mean IBSA is a democracy-promotion alliance in the narrow sense. It means India, Brazil, and South Africa bring a democratic political vocabulary into Global South diplomacy: pluralism, public accountability, rights, institutional reform, social inclusion, and negotiation. In their November 19, 2024, media statement, IBSA leaders described the forum as a grouping of three pluralistic, multicultural, and multiethnic democracies and emphasised values including reformed multilateralism, democracy, human rights, sovereign equality, international law, diplomacy, and sustainable development.
That gives IBSA a useful role inside BRICS. BRICS includes countries with different political systems, different alignments with the West, and different security priorities. When the bloc speaks on reforming global governance, development finance, or a multipolar world order, IBSA can help frame those arguments in terms that appeal beyond anti-Western rhetoric.
This is where IBSA’s importance in BRICS becomes practical. A call for reform is more persuasive when it is not only a complaint about existing power. It needs a credible alternative. India, Brazil, and South Africa can argue that global institutions should become more representative, not less rules-based; more inclusive, not merely more transactional; and more responsive to developing countries, not simply more fragmented.
Democratic Legitimacy Strengthens Development Diplomacy
Development is not only about financing roads, ports, energy systems, digital networks, or water projects. It is also about who decides, who benefits, who is consulted, and whether public institutions can translate financing into broad social gains. Democratic systems are imperfect, but they create channels through parliaments, courts, media, elections, local governments, and civil society that can make development policy more accountable.
That matters for BRICS development discussions. The New Development Bank describes itself as a multilateral development bank established by the BRICS countries to mobilise resources for infrastructure and sustainable development projects in emerging markets and developing countries. Its focus areas include clean energy, transport infrastructure, water and sanitation, digital infrastructure, environmental protection, and social infrastructure.
IBSA can push the conversation around such financing towards social legitimacy. It can ask whether infrastructure reaches underserved communities, whether climate projects include adaptation as well as mitigation, whether digital systems protect citizens, and whether development lending supports national priorities without creating new vulnerabilities.
The Democratic Core Also Has Limits
IBSA’s democratic identity should not be romanticised. India, Brazil, and South Africa each face domestic debates over inequality, polarisation, institutional stress, social trust, public service delivery, and the quality of representation. Their democracies are large and consequential, but they are not frictionless models.
That is precisely why IBSA can be credible. These countries do not speak from a position of abstract perfection. They speak from experience with mass democracy under development pressure. They understand that democratic development involves compromise, messy politics, uneven capacity, and constant negotiation between growth, redistribution, identity, and rights.
How Does IBSA Complement BRICS Rather Than Compete With It?
IBSA complements BRICS by doing what a smaller, values-linked, three-country forum can do better than a large strategic bloc. BRICS offers weight: population, markets, finance, commodity influence, geopolitical visibility, and negotiating scale. IBSA offers coherence: a manageable democratic triangle that can test ideas, coordinate messages, and keep development priorities connected to inclusive governance.
The two formats solve different problems. BRICS is useful when emerging and developing economies need a larger platform to question old hierarchies in finance, trade, and global governance. IBSA is useful when India, Brazil, and South Africa need a trusted space to align positions before entering broader forums such as BRICS, the G20, the United Nations, climate negotiations, and development finance debates.
BRICS Gives Scale
BRICS development is attractive to many countries because it promises a wider range of partnerships outside traditional Western-led institutions. The New Development Bank is the most concrete institutional expression of that promise, with a mandate focused on infrastructure and sustainable development in emerging markets and developing countries. The bank’s membership has also expanded beyond the original BRICS founders to include additional members such as Bangladesh, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Algeria, and Uzbekistan, according to the NDB’s member listing.
Scale helps. Large platforms can mobilise attention, capital, summit diplomacy, and bargaining power. They can give developing countries more room to negotiate over debt, currencies, supply chains, technology access, climate finance, and institutional reform.
But scale also creates complexity. The more members a grouping has, the harder it becomes to maintain a clear political identity. BRICS can agree on reforming global governance in broad terms, but members may disagree on security conflicts, sanctions, trade dependencies, regional rivalries, and the meaning of a multipolar order.
IBSA Gives Coherence
IBSA’s smaller format reduces that complexity. Three members can coordinate more easily than a large bloc with varied political systems and geopolitical alignments. They can focus on areas where their interests overlap without requiring every BRICS member to share the same emphasis.
That makes IBSA especially useful for agenda-setting. India, Brazil, and South Africa can develop language on development, democracy, poverty reduction, food security, public health, digital inclusion, climate adaptation, and multilateral reform, then carry those ideas into larger forums. This does not guarantee success, but it improves the chances that their positions are clear before they enter more crowded negotiations.
IBSA Can Prevent BRICS From Becoming One-Dimensional
One risk for BRICS is that outside observers view it mainly through the lens of China-Russia relations, anti-Western signalling, currency politics, or geopolitical confrontation. That frame is incomplete. Many BRICS members and partners are interested in practical development gains, not ideological alignment.
IBSA helps widen the frame. It reminds observers that BRICS also contains democracies seeking reform from within the international system. India, Brazil, and South Africa often want a more representative order, but not necessarily a disorderly one. They can support multipolarity while still defending negotiation, international law, institution-building, and sustainable development.
The Three Working Roles of IBSA
IBSA’s relevance is easiest to understand through its working roles. It is not only a symbolic triangle. Its official mechanisms describe three fronts: consultation and coordination on global and regional political issues, trilateral collaboration through working groups and people-to-people forums, and assistance to other developing countries through the IBSA Fund.
1. Political Coordination
Political coordination is the most visible role. India, Brazil, and South Africa use IBSA to compare positions on global governance reform, international economic rules, climate issues, sustainable development, peace, security, and the representation of developing regions.
This coordination matters because each country belongs to multiple diplomatic spaces. India is active in Asian, Indo-Pacific, BRICS, G20, and UN debates. Brazil moves through Latin American, Atlantic, climate, agricultural, BRICS, G20, and UN channels. South Africa works through African Union, BRICS, G20, UN, and South-South platforms. IBSA helps connect those circles.
The practical benefit is message discipline. When three major democracies from three continents repeat similar language on reforming the UN Security Council, improving development finance, addressing climate vulnerability, or strengthening food security, the argument becomes harder to dismiss as a narrow national demand.
2. Trilateral Cooperation
IBSA also supports sectoral cooperation among the three members. Its agenda has included areas such as agriculture, climate change, culture, defence, education, energy, health, science and technology, social development, trade and investment, tourism, and transport, according to the South African Government’s IBSA Dialogue Forum page.
This matters because development challenges are often operational. Countries need policy models, technical capacity, training, institutional knowledge, and networks among officials, experts, businesses, universities, and civil society. IBSA’s people-to-people and working-group approach can turn diplomatic alignment into practical learning.
For example, the three countries can compare approaches to digital public infrastructure, renewable energy, school feeding, public health delivery, small business support, agricultural resilience, and urban transport. They do not need to copy one another exactly. The value lies in adaptation: seeing what worked elsewhere, understanding why, and modifying it for local conditions.
3. Development Cooperation Through the IBSA Fund
The IBSA Fund is the forum’s most concrete development instrument. It was established jointly by India, Brazil, and South Africa in March 2004 as a facility for poverty and hunger alleviation. The official IBSA site identifies assistance to other developing countries through the fund as one of the forum’s three pillars, and the 2024 IBSA leaders’ statement called for strengthening, expanding, and promoting the fund.
The fund is important because it embodies South-South cooperation in a direct way. Instead of only asking established donors and lenders to change, IBSA countries pool their own resources and experience to support projects in other developing countries. That gives their diplomacy practical credibility.
It also distinguishes IBSA from forums that are mostly declaratory. Declarations matter, but institutions and projects matter more. A development-focused fund gives the three countries a way to connect values, policy, and implementation.
What Makes IBSA Important for BRICS Development?
IBSA is important for BRICS development because it can connect large-scale finance and geopolitical reform to human development priorities. BRICS development often focuses on infrastructure, sustainable growth, alternative financing, and emerging-market voice. IBSA adds a sharper emphasis on poverty reduction, democratic accountability, social inclusion, and cross-regional learning.
This is not a small distinction. A development bank can finance infrastructure, but development strategy still requires choices. Should money prioritise export corridors or local service access? Should energy investment focus only on generation capacity or also affordability and resilience? Should digital infrastructure emphasise national competitiveness or citizen inclusion? IBSA is well placed to keep those questions visible.
The Development Agenda Needs More Than Capital
Capital is necessary, but it is not sufficient. Countries need institutions capable of planning, procurement, maintenance, social consultation, environmental management, and long-term delivery. They need policy designs that reduce poverty rather than simply produce impressive project announcements.
India, Brazil, and South Africa have all experimented with large-scale social and development programmes under democratic conditions. Their experience gives them a practical perspective on implementation: how to deliver at scale, how to manage diversity, how to balance national policy with local needs, and how to maintain legitimacy when reforms create winners and losers.
That is why IBSA can add depth to BRICS development. It can bring social-policy questions into infrastructure debates and democratic-governance questions into financing discussions.
Food, Climate, and Public Goods Are Natural IBSA Issues
Food security, climate resilience, public health, and digital inclusion are especially natural issues for IBSA. They affect large populations, require state capacity, and involve both domestic policy and international cooperation. They also cut across the three regions IBSA represents.
Brazil’s agricultural and environmental profile, India’s scale in digital and development delivery, and South Africa’s African policy context create opportunities for practical exchange. The value is not that one country has all the answers. The value is that each has experience with development under constraint.
Inside BRICS, that experience can keep attention on adaptation finance, poverty reduction, agricultural resilience, health systems, and inclusive technology. Those themes help BRICS speak to the everyday needs of developing countries, not only to the ambitions of states.
IBSA’s Role in Global Governance Reform
Global governance reform is one of IBSA’s strongest areas of convergence. India, Brazil, and South Africa have long argued that international institutions should better reflect contemporary political and economic realities. The 2024 IBSA leaders’ statement supported urgent and comprehensive reform of global governance institutions and emphasised a more representative and responsive multilateral system.
This overlaps strongly with BRICS. BRICS has consistently positioned itself as a platform for emerging and developing countries seeking greater influence in institutions shaped after the Second World War and during later phases of Western economic dominance. But IBSA brings a distinctive legitimacy to this reform agenda because its members can argue from democratic representation across three continents.
Reform Without Rejection
A key IBSA contribution is the idea of reform without wholesale rejection. India, Brazil, and South Africa can criticise underrepresentation in global institutions while still valuing multilateral rules, diplomacy, international law, and negotiated outcomes. That distinction is important.
Many developing countries want fairer institutions, not a world where power alone decides outcomes. They want more voice in the UN system, financial institutions, climate negotiations, technology governance, and trade rules. IBSA can help express that demand in a way that is assertive but not nihilistic.
A Bridge Between Developing and Developed Countries
IBSA’s 2024 leaders’ statement said its principles and values can serve as a bridge between developing and developed countries. That bridge function is central to the forum’s relevance. India, Brazil, and South Africa can speak credibly to other developing countries because they share many development concerns, but they can also engage developed democracies because they share parts of a democratic vocabulary.
This does not make IBSA neutral on every issue. The three countries have interests and sometimes sharp criticisms of existing power structures. But bridge diplomacy does not require neutrality. It requires enough trust from different sides to keep negotiations alive.
The G20 Sequence Strengthened IBSA’s Visibility
IBSA gained renewed relevance from the recent sequence of G20 presidencies. India held the G20 presidency in 2023, Brazil in 2024, and South Africa in 2025. IBSA leaders explicitly linked this sequence to the goal of amplifying the voice of the Global South and integrating its priorities into the G20 agenda.
That sequence matters because the G20 is where advanced economies, major emerging economies, and key international institutions meet around finance, development, debt, climate, health, and macroeconomic coordination. When the three IBSA members lead consecutive G20 agendas, they gain an unusual opportunity to carry common themes across multiple years.
South Africa’s 2025 G20 moment also reinforced IBSA’s African dimension. India’s Prime Minister participated in an IBSA Leaders’ Meeting in Johannesburg on November 23, 2025, and the meeting was framed around Global South priorities during the first G20 Summit held on African soil.
Why the G20 Link Matters for BRICS
The G20 link matters because BRICS and the G20 operate differently. BRICS is a Global South-centred political and development platform. The G20 includes advanced economies, emerging economies, the European Union, and the African Union. IBSA can translate ideas between the two spaces.
For example, a position developed among IBSA countries can be amplified in BRICS, then brought into the G20 in a form that speaks to a broader set of actors. Conversely, constraints encountered in the G20 can help IBSA refine what is realistically achievable in BRICS development and governance reform.
This makes IBSA a diplomatic hinge. It is small enough for focused coordination, broad enough to represent three regions, and connected enough to influence larger institutions.
Key Reasons IBSA Still Matters
IBSA’s relevance is easy to underestimate because it does not always dominate headlines. Its value lies in coordination, credibility, and continuity rather than spectacle.
Key reasons IBSA still matters include:
- It gives BRICS a democratic voice from within. India, Brazil, and South Africa help show that demands for a more multipolar order are not limited to authoritarian or anti-Western positions.
- It links three major regions. IBSA connects Asia, Latin America, and Africa through countries with regional weight and global ambitions.
- It keeps development people-centred. The forum’s focus on poverty, hunger, social development, and practical cooperation can enrich broader BRICS development debates.
- It supports reformist multilateralism. IBSA can argue for changing global institutions while still defending diplomacy, rules, and negotiated solutions.
- It creates a smaller coordination space. In a larger BRICS-plus environment, India, Brazil, and South Africa need a forum where they can align before wider negotiations.
- It strengthens South-South cooperation. Through the IBSA Fund and sectoral work, the forum can demonstrate cooperation rather than only call for it.
- It improves cross-forum diplomacy. IBSA countries operate across BRICS, the G20, the UN, regional bodies, climate negotiations, and development finance institutions.
The Challenges IBSA Must Manage
IBSA still matters, but its future is not automatic. The forum must overcome several challenges if it wants to remain influential inside BRICS and beyond.
Uneven Political Attention
IBSA has sometimes struggled for visibility compared with BRICS. That is understandable. BRICS has larger economies, sharper geopolitical symbolism, and major summit attention. IBSA must therefore prove that it is more than a legacy forum from an earlier phase of South-South diplomacy.
The best way to do that is not by competing for headlines. It is by producing focused outcomes: coordinated positions, practical projects, development cooperation, research networks, and visible contributions to larger forums.
Different Strategic Priorities
India, Brazil, and South Africa do not always prioritise the same issues. India’s security concerns differ from Brazil’s. Brazil’s climate and agricultural politics differ from South Africa’s. South Africa’s continental responsibilities differ from India’s regional environment.
These differences can slow coordination. But they can also make IBSA more useful. If the three countries can agree despite different contexts, their common position often has wider relevance.
The Need for Practical Delivery
IBSA cannot rely only on shared values. It needs implementation. The forum’s long-term credibility will depend on whether it can strengthen the IBSA Fund, revive sectoral cooperation, engage civil society and business networks, and show that its democratic development identity produces usable ideas.
That is especially important inside BRICS. Larger forums reward countries that arrive with clear proposals. IBSA should function as a workshop for those proposals.
How IBSA Can Strengthen Its Role Inside BRICS
IBSA can remain relevant by being selective. It does not need to address every issue on the BRICS agenda. It should focus where its democratic and developmental identity gives it a comparative advantage.
A practical IBSA agenda inside BRICS could include:
- Inclusive infrastructure standards: IBSA could promote development finance principles that consider access, affordability, climate resilience, local jobs, and social impact.
- Food and nutrition security: The three countries can coordinate around resilient agriculture, school feeding, supply-chain stability, and support for vulnerable countries.
- Climate adaptation and just transitions: IBSA can argue that climate finance should serve developing-country realities, including adaptation, energy access, and employment.
- Digital public infrastructure and governance: India, Brazil, and South Africa can compare approaches to digital identity, payments, inclusion, data protection, and public service delivery.
- Reform of multilateral institutions: IBSA can develop language that connects representation, legitimacy, and effectiveness in the UN, development banks, and global economic governance.
- People-to-people and knowledge networks: Academic, business, local government, women’s, and civil society exchanges can prevent IBSA from becoming only an elite diplomatic forum.
IBSA Is More Relevant in an Expanded BRICS
The larger BRICS becomes, the more IBSA’s internal coherence matters. Expansion gives BRICS more reach, but it also increases the range of interests in the room. In that setting, smaller coalitions become essential.
IBSA is one of those coalitions. It does not divide BRICS; it helps organise it. It gives three major democratic members a way to coordinate around shared principles, bring development concerns into sharper focus, and prevent the bloc’s message from being reduced to geopolitical confrontation.
For India, Brazil, and South Africa, IBSA is also a way to protect their own agency. Each country benefits from BRICS, but none wants to be treated as a junior participant in someone else’s strategic project. IBSA helps them act together when their interests overlap and speak with a cross-regional democratic voice.
The Bottom Line
IBSA still matters because BRICS needs more than size. It needs credibility, social purpose, institutional imagination, and voices that can connect multipolar reform with democratic development. India, Brazil, and South Africa provide that combination better together than they do separately.
The future of IBSA will depend on delivery. If it remains only a diplomatic memory, its influence will fade. If it strengthens the IBSA Fund, coordinates serious positions, and brings practical development ideas into BRICS, the G20, and the UN, it can remain one of the most important democratic platforms in the Global South.
That is the real answer to whether IBSA still matters: yes, because a larger BRICS makes a democratic core more necessary, not less.
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