BRICS Expands with 9 New Partner Countries. Now it’s half of World Population

After admitting four new members in 2024, BRICS officially welcomes nine new nations as partner countries on January 1, 2025. They are:

• Belarus
• Bolivia
• Cuba
• Indonesia
• Kazakhstan
• Malaysia
• Thailand
• Uganda
• Uzbekistan

With its nine members and nine partners, BRICS now makes up roughly half of the global population and more than 41% of world GDP (PPP). MRO reported.

The group is an economic powerhouse, including top producers of key commodities like oil, gas, grains, meat, and minerals.

At the BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia in October 2024, 13 countries were invited to become BRICS partners, meaning they are on the path to full membership in the near future.

Nine of these 13 nations accepted the invitation. The remaining four did not give a formal response as of the end of 2024. These were Algeria, Nigeria, Turkey/Türkiye, Vietnam.

The Russian government, which in December announced the admission of the nine new partners, emphasized that “we expect that in the near future responses will come from” the other four.

Initially founded in 2009 as BRIC—by Brazil, Russia, India, and China—the organization grew in 2010 with the addition of South Africa.

At the 2023 summit in Johannesburg, South Africa, BRICS expanded again, inviting six more countries: Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the UAE accepted the invitation and officially became BRICS members in January 2024.

Saudi Arabia still had not made a formal decision as of the end of 2024.

Argentina initially agreed to join, when it had a center-left government led by President Alberto Fernández and Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. However, far-right pro-U.S. leader Javier Milei came to power in December 2023, and he overturned the decision, blocking Argentina from joining BRICS in January 2024.

With the addition of the partner states, nine of the 20 most populous countries on Earth are now part of BRICS.

Their combined population is approximately 4 billion, or roughly half of the world population.

India is the most populous country on Earth, followed by China in second. Each country has more than 1.4 billion inhabitants.

With nearly 290,000 citizens, Indonesia is the fourth-most populous nation.

Brazil is the seventh-most populous country, followed by Russia in ninth and Ethiopia in tenth.

Egypt is the 14th-most populous nation; Iran is the 17th; and Thailand is the 20th.

The sixth-most populous nation, Nigeria, was invited to join BRICS as a partner, but did not give a formal answer in 2024.