South Africa has stepped confidently onto the global stage of artificial intelligence governance, with President Cyril Ramaphosa proposing that BRICS establish an international mechanism for the independent scientific evaluation of AI, a bold, constructive idea presented at the 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi on Sunday.
Speaking during a session on Shaping the Future for Inclusive Growth, the President cast AI as a technology of enormous promise for the developing world, capable, if used effectively and responsibly, of helping to reduce inequality, poverty and underdevelopment.
“We should therefore neither fear AI nor approach it recklessly. Our responsibility is to ensure that human governance advances as rapidly as artificial intelligence itself,” President Ramaphosa said.
A Practical Proposal, Not Just a Warning
The President said AI is already showing the capability to transform medicine, education, scientific discovery, agriculture, productivity and development. South Africa’s answer to managing its risks is characteristically pragmatic: treat powerful AI the way the world already treats aviation, pharmaceuticals, nuclear power and financial institutions, with formal external checks, audits and oversight.
South Africa’s proposal calls for the BRICS evaluation mechanism to be backed by meaningful human-control principles, mandatory reporting of serious incidents, progressively stronger safeguards as capability increases, and, crucially for the Global South, simultaneous investment in sovereign AI capacity for developing economies.
“We must never reach a situation where technological capability has moved beyond our capacity to understand it, supervise it and control it,” the President said.
Science and Cooperation at the Centre
The President reaffirmed South Africa’s support for continued scientific cooperation through initiatives such as the BRICS Intelligent Telescope and Data Network and the BRICS Vaccine Research and Development Centre, and called for stronger medical sovereignty, vaccine development, genomic surveillance and diagnostic capabilities for the Global South.
On the economic front, he backed a balanced and gradual expansion of the New Development Bank, welcomed discussions on the proposed New Investment Platform and the BRICS Multilateral Guarantees initiative, and urged greater use of local currencies, stronger cross-border payment systems and deeper financial interconnectivity.
Twenty Years of BRICS, and an Ambitious Decade Ahead
Marking the 20th anniversary of BRICS, President Ramaphosa said the bloc should enter its third decade with greater ambition, deepening cooperation with partner countries in public health, education, science and technology, finance and trade.
With a concrete governance proposal on the table and a firm insistence that developing countries build their own AI capacity rather than watch from the sidelines, South Africa has positioned itself as a thoughtful leader in one of the defining conversations of our time, proof once again that on the world stage, South African ideas carry weight.
Photo: sanews.gov.za
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