A fellow BRICS member and key Global South partner. South Africa hosted the 2023 BRICS summit that admitted new members. India-South Africa trade is growing through the bilateral investment treaty; both share a non-aligned tradition.
South African Deputy President Paul Mashatile completed his first bilateral visit to India in his current capacity, meeting top Indian leadership and business figures to deepen trade, investment, and diplomatic ties between the two Global South powers.
India's minerals agreement with South Africa represents a structural shift in how New Delhi secures the raw materials essential to its clean energy ambitions, moving beyond spot-market dependence toward long-term supply sovereignty.
India, Brazil, and South Africa used their June trilateral to position the IBSA framework as a counterweight to Western-dominated governance reform, signaling coordinated pressure on multilateral institutions ahead of Brazil's G20 presidency.
New Delhi is repositioning South Africa as a critical supplier of strategic minerals essential to India's energy transition and defense manufacturing, leveraging BRICS proximity to lock in long-term supply chains.
India's strategic support for BRICS expansion at Johannesburg signals a shift from club exclusivity to managed pluralism—enlarging the Global South coalition while actively preventing it from becoming explicitly anti-Western.
By leading a 100-nation coalition on vaccine IP waivers, India positioned itself as the developing world's strategic voice while exposing fractures in the rules-based multilateral order.
India's bilateral with South Africa at the Johannesburg BRICS summit reveals a deliberate shift toward deepening IBSA mechanisms and non-traditional cooperation vectors as a hedge against BRICS institutional diffusion.
By securing the first joint BRICS terrorism declaration naming Pakistan-based groups, India converted its summit presidency into diplomatic leverage on the issue that has isolated it from consensus multilateralism.