NAIROBI, October 8. /TASS/. Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed intends to take part in the BRICS summit to be held in Kazan in late October, the Russian embassy in Addis Ababa told TASS.
"The Ethiopian side has confirmed the participation of the prime minister in the meeting of the BRICS leaders," the embassy said.
The BRICS group has now gone through two waves of expansion since its inception in 2006. First, in 2011, South Africa joined founding members Brazil, Russia, India and China. Then, in August 2023, six new members, including Argentina, were invited to join BRICS after the intergovernmental group’s summit in Johannesburg. However, in December 2023, the new Argentinian government of President Javier Milei announced that it had declined the invitation for the time being because it considered integration with BRICS impractical. The five new members - Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates - began working as full-fledged BRICS member states since January 1.
Russia has assumed the rotating BRICS chairmanship on January 1, 2024. The main event will be the BRICS summit in Kazan on October 22-24, 2024. Earlier, Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov said that Moscow has invited 36 foreign leaders to the summit, 18 of whom have already confirmed their attendance. He emphasized that in addition to the nine member states, Russia has invited the leaders of the Commonwealth of Independent States, the heads of influential regional integration associations in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and Southeast Asia, as well as the leaders of countries seeking BRICS membership or cooperation with the association.