Inside the Inaugural BRICS Academic Forum: How Track II Diplomacy Is Reshaping Global South Investment and the Future of BRICS Currency
The Dawn of a New Diplomatic Era in New Delhi
Picture this: It is April 17, 2026, in New Delhi. The monsoon is still weeks away, but there is a different kind of electricity in the air. Inside a prestigious conference hall, more than sixty of the world’s most brilliant minds have gathered, representing nations that collectively command approximately 45 percent of the world’s population and 41 percent of global GDP measured by purchasing power parity. They are not government ministers or heads of state. They are scholars, researchers, and policy experts. They are the intellectual backbone of what may become the most consequential geopolitical coalition of the twenty first century: BRICS.
The inaugural BRICS Academic Forum, convened by the Observer Research Foundation and the Research and Information System for Developing Countries, represents far more than another diplomatic gathering. It signals a fundamental shift in how emerging economies approach multilateral policy making. For the first time in BRICS history, a dedicated Track II platform has been institutionalized to systematically channel academic research and evidence based policy analysis directly into the deliberations that will shape the 18th BRICS Summit in September 2026. This is not merely bureaucracy. This is the architecture of a new global order being constructed in real time.
India’s assumption of the BRICS presidency in 2026 marked a transformative moment for global governance. Under the overarching theme ‘Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability,’ India has deliberately positioned intellectual exchange at the very center of its diplomatic strategy. The choice is deliberate and deeply strategic. In an era of unprecedented geopolitical fragmentation, supply chain disruptions, and climate imperatives, the nations of the Global South are no longer content to accept governance frameworks designed by and for Western powers. They are building their own.
Understanding Track II Diplomacy: The Hidden Engine of Global Influence
To grasp the significance of the BRICS Academic Forum, one must first understand Track II diplomacy, a concept that has quietly reshaped international relations for decades. Born during the Cold War when official diplomatic channels between the United States and Soviet Union remained frozen by ideological conflict, Track II diplomacy created space for private individuals, scholars, and policy experts to meet unofficially and explore solutions that government negotiators bound by diplomatic protocols could not easily pursue. What began at Dartmouth College in the 1960s has evolved into a recognized tool of statecraft essential for navigating what scholars now term ‘unconventional conflicts’ requiring equally unconventional solutions.
For BRICS, Track II diplomacy through the Academic Forum provides several strategic advantages that traditional state to state diplomacy simply cannot match. It creates protected intellectual space where scholars can engage with fundamental questions unconstrained by formal diplomatic protocols. It enables the involvement of researchers who can think beyond immediate geopolitical tensions between member states. It generates evidence based policy recommendations grounded in rigorous academic research rather than short term political calculation. Most importantly, it builds networks of intellectual leaders whose ideas can percolate into official policy discussions over years and decades, shaping the normative frameworks through which BRICS nations understand their own interests and possibilities.
The BRICS Think Tanks Council, established in 2013 at the eThekwini Summit in Durban, South Africa, created the foundational institutional framework that made the Academic Forum possible. Comprising premier research institutions from each member country, including India’s Observer Research Foundation, Brazil’s Institute for Applied Economic Research, Russia’s National Committee for BRICS Research, China’s Council for BRICS Think Tank Cooperation, and South Africa’s National Institute for the Humanities, the Council was explicitly designed to form a platform for exchanging ideas among researchers, convening academic forums, and presenting policy recommendations directly to BRICS Leaders. This institutional arrangement transforms academic knowledge production from an isolated scholarly endeavor into an integral component of multilateral governance.
India’s 2026 Presidency: Four Pillars for a Transforming World
India formally launched its BRICS presidency on January 13, 2026, unveiling an official logo and website that signaled the commencement of what would become a transformative year for the grouping. India’s BRICS Sherpa, Sudhakar Dalela, articulated during the first meeting of BRICS Sherpas and Sous Sherpas in New Delhi on February 9-10, 2026, that the presidency would advance priorities organized around four interconnected pillars: resilience, innovation, cooperation, and sustainability. These four words are not mere rhetorical flourishes. They represent a comprehensive diagnosis of what ails the contemporary international system and a prescription for what must be done.
The resilience pillar encompasses strengthening agriculture, health systems, disaster response capacity, energy security, and global supply chain stability. It recognizes what the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent geopolitical shocks made painfully clear: developing economies face particular vulnerabilities to external disruptions, and depending on distant suppliers for essential goods during crises is a recipe for catastrophe. The innovation dimension emphasizes leveraging emerging technologies, particularly artificial intelligence and digital solutions, to address socio economic challenges while maintaining people centric approaches that ensure technological advancement serves human development rather than exacerbating inequality. The cooperation pillar stresses deeper economic engagement among BRICS members, strengthened multilateral institutions under Global South leadership, and unified positions on critical questions of global governance. The sustainability commitment involves concrete action on climate change, clean energy promotion, and the pursuit of equitable development pathways that do not replicate the carbon intensive trajectory of industrialized nations.
These four pillars were deliberately timed to inform the Academic Forum in April 2026, creating roughly four months for the intellectual work of scholars and experts to be synthesized into policy recommendations that could meaningfully shape the negotiations leading to the September summit. This sequencing reveals sophisticated strategic thinking: rather than treating academic input as an afterthought or a ceremonial appendage to real diplomacy, India’s presidency has positioned intellectual exchange as the foundation upon which official positions are built.
Inside the Forum: When the World’s Brightest Minds Convene
The two day event brought together an extraordinary assembly of intellectual firepower. Thirteen international speakers represented leading academic, policy, and governmental perspectives. Multiple concurrent working sessions, convenings, and discussion roundtables were organized thematically rather than by national perspective, a deliberate structural choice that encouraged genuine collaboration across borders rather than the kind of positional bargaining that too often characterizes multilateral meetings. Samir Saran, President of the Observer Research Foundation and Chair of the BRICS Think Tanks Council, set the intellectual tenor by emphasizing the extraordinary urgency of BRICS collaboration at a moment when the world confronts persistent geopolitical conflicts stretching from Eastern Europe through the Middle East to Asia, food security concerns rooted in disrupted agricultural supply chains and climate variability, and profound disruptions to global supply chains threatening the basic functioning of international commerce.
Sudhakar Dalela addressed participants with a powerful observation: 2026 marks two decades of BRICS history, from the concept’s emergence in academic circles through its evolution into a consequential force in global affairs. The original BRICS concept emerged from writings by Russian foreign minister Yevgeny Primakov regarding a multipolar world order that would constrain American unilateralism and create space for regional powers to exercise greater autonomy. Two decades later, that academic concept has materialized into a coalition encompassing ten full members plus additional partner countries, with institutions like the New Development Bank that by April 2026 had approved financing totaling approximately $42.9 billion across 139 development projects. The Academic Forum represents the maturation of BRICS from a diplomatic talking shop into a genuine institutional ecosystem capable of generating, refining, and implementing distinctive policy alternatives.
Over the course of two intense days, more than sixty scholars and policy experts from across BRICS countries engaged in sustained discussion of emerging global economic challenges, South-South cooperation mechanisms, and the specific policy domains where BRICS members possessed particular comparative advantages or faced shared vulnerabilities. The discussions were not academic in the pejorative sense of being disconnected from reality. They were intensely practical, focused on generating actionable recommendations that could survive the transition from scholarly analysis to political negotiation to implementation across diverse governance contexts.
Artificial Intelligence, Digital Sovereignty, and the Technology Frontier
Among the most significant areas of discussion was artificial intelligence governance, a domain where BRICS countries face shared challenges and where the bloc could establish distinctive precedents regarding ‘Responsible AI’ principles. BRICS members have already implemented innovative AI applications across multiple domains: India’s Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission leverages AI in telemedicine, Russia’s Third Opinion system assists radiologists in disease detection, and China’s Smart Agriculture Action Plan uses AI to connect small farmers to market systems. Yet these applications have evolved largely independently without systematic coordination or shared frameworks ensuring that AI development within BRICS countries adheres to common ethical principles.
The Academic Forum discussions went beyond cataloging existing innovations to recommend frameworks for systematizing technology transfer among BRICS countries, establishing joint research and development initiatives in AI, and creating mechanisms through which smaller and less technologically advanced BRICS members could access innovations developed by more advanced economies without replicating historical patterns of technological dependence or intellectual property appropriation. Participants advocated establishing what they termed a ‘BRICS observatory’ to monitor and share best practices in AI governance, facilitate exchange of successful policies, and promote development of open source AI systems that could serve the collective interests of Global South nations in maintaining what has come to be called ‘digital sovereignty.’ This concept, emphasizing that developing nations should maintain control over their strategic digital systems and data, resonates deeply across BRICS membership and represents a direct challenge to the technological dominance of Western companies and institutions.
BRICS Currency, De-Dollarization, and the Future of Global Finance
The Academic Forum discussions also addressed one of the most closely watched and frequently misunderstood aspects of BRICS cooperation: the movement toward using local currencies in transactions among member nations and reducing dependence on the U.S. dollar. While often sensationalized as an effort to create a ‘common BRICS currency’ that would directly challenge the dollar’s global dominance, the reality discussed by forum participants was both more nuanced and more achievable. The focus was on creating optionality, establishing mechanisms through which BRICS members can conduct trade and finance development projects using local currencies or alternative settlement systems, thereby reducing vulnerability to U.S. sanctions and monetary policy decisions that may not align with the development needs of Global South nations.
The New Development Bank features prominently in these discussions. With lending reaching $42.9 billion across 139 projects by early 2026, the NDB has emerged as a consequential development finance institution that directly competes with and potentially displaces the World Bank and Asian Development Bank in financing infrastructure and development projects in member countries. The Academic Forum recommendations examined mechanisms through which the NDB could be further strengthened, possibilities for coordinating BRICS members’ voting power in international financial institutions, and the proposed but not yet operational BRICS Grain Exchange that would establish digital marketplace infrastructure enabling direct transactions between grain producers and importers using alternative currency settlement mechanisms. These are not theoretical constructs. They are practical initiatives that, if successfully implemented, could fundamentally restructure global commodity markets and development finance. For those looking to invest in BRICS economies, understanding these mechanisms is essential because they will shape the regulatory environment, currency risk calculations, and market access opportunities for years to come.
Energy Transition, Food Security, and the Sustainability Imperative
The sustainability discussions at the Academic Forum reflected a sophisticated understanding that BRICS nations, collectively among the world’s largest energy consumers and producers, occupy a unique position in the global energy transition. Brazil commands vast hydropower resources and biomass capacity. China represents the world’s largest solar and wind power manufacturer. India is emerging as a major renewable energy investor. South Africa confronts a crucial moment in transitioning away from coal dependence. Russia controls vast hydrocarbon reserves requiring careful management during an energy transition period. The BRICS Energy Transition Skills Report 2025 emphasizes substantial potential for collaborative efforts to advance labor market development within the energy sector and unlock human potential through skills development aligned with renewable energy deployment.
Food security emerged as another critical concern. BRICS members collectively represent enormous agricultural producers and consumers, commanding approximately 44 percent of global wheat trade. The Academic Forum discussions examined how BRICS countries could collaborate in agricultural research, share best practices in productivity enhancement, and develop frameworks ensuring food security across member populations while expanding export opportunities for agricultural producers. Water security was identified as an increasingly urgent challenge, with discussions emphasizing innovative approaches including atmospheric water generation technology and other methods for augmenting water availability in water stressed regions. The recommendations advocated for BRICS countries to position themselves as leaders in demonstrating that the Global South could simultaneously pursue ambitious climate action, develop sustainably, and reduce inequalities, thereby challenging the false binary that developing nations must choose between environmental sustainability and development.
The Expansion Question: Opportunity and Complexity
The convening of the inaugural Academic Forum occurred against the backdrop of substantial BRICS expansion that has transformed the grouping from five countries to a coalition encompassing ten full members. Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates attended their first BRICS summit as full member states in 2024. Indonesia formally joined in January 2025, marking the first Southeast Asian nation to enter the bloc. Beyond the ten full members, thirteen additional countries were invited in October 2024 to participate as ‘partner countries’ with specific rights to engage with BRICS initiatives. Saudi Arabia has pursued membership for multiple years, though its formal admission status remains ambiguous as of mid-2026, reportedly complicated by geopolitical considerations and U.S. pressure.
This expansion creates both extraordinary opportunities and significant challenges. The opportunity manifests in the dramatic increase in BRICS’s share of global economic output and geopolitical influence. The challenge arises from greater heterogeneity in governance systems, development levels, geopolitical alignments, and policy preferences among members, complicating consensus building and potentially generating tensions. The Academic Forum’s establishment partly responds to these challenges by creating mechanisms through which intellectual exchange and evidence based policy analysis can help identify areas of common interest and feasible cooperation even amid divergent geopolitical perspectives. By organizing discussions thematically around substantive policy challenges rather than national interest positions, the forum constructs intellectual spaces where scholars from members with sometimes competing interests can collaborate in identifying research based solutions to shared challenges.
Why BRICS Matters for Global Investors and the Real World Economy
For those watching global markets and considering where to invest in BRICS economies, the institutional developments crystallized by the Academic Forum carry profound implications. The movement toward local currency settlement mechanisms, the strengthening of the New Development Bank, the proposed BRICS Grain Exchange, and the coordination of positions on AI governance and digital sovereignty are not merely diplomatic abstractions. They are signals of a world where the economic infrastructure that has governed international commerce since 1945 is being systematically challenged and incrementally replaced by alternative architectures designed by and for Global South nations.
Real world tokenization, the process of representing physical assets as digital tokens on blockchain networks, represents another frontier where BRICS coordination could prove transformative. While not the primary focus of this inaugural Academic Forum, the broader BRICS innovation agenda increasingly encompasses exploration of digital assets, blockchain based payment systems, and financial technology innovations that could accelerate de-dollarization while providing new vehicles for investment in emerging market infrastructure and development projects. The BRICS Pay system, still under development, exemplifies this direction. Investors who understand these trends early will be positioned to capitalize on opportunities that others may not recognize until the frameworks are fully established.
The World Economic Forum’s 2025 Supply Chain Resilience Review identified four plausible scenarios for 2025-2027, ranging from continued multilateral cooperation to severe geopolitical fragmentation with eroding trust in multilateral institutions. BRICS’s effort to construct frameworks for South-South cooperation carries heightened significance as an alternative to scenarios of complete fragmentation or continued dominance of global governance by Western led institutions. For investors, this means that BRICS policy coordination will increasingly shape the risk environment for investments in emerging markets, determine the regulatory frameworks governing cross border capital flows, and influence the stability of currency arrangements that affect investment returns.
The Road to September and Beyond
As the 18th BRICS Summit approaches in September 2026, the policy recommendations generated through the Academic Forum will travel a deliberate path. They will be compiled into formal documentation and submitted to national Sherpas for consideration within the broader BRICS agenda and preparation of the summit’s joint declaration. The recommendations concerning climate action, energy transition, artificial intelligence governance, health cooperation, agricultural development, and multilateral reform constitute the intellectual scaffolding upon which BRICS members can construct genuinely coordinated policies that advance shared interests while respecting the legitimate autonomy and development aspirations of all members.
Looking beyond the immediate summit, the establishment of the Academic Forum as an institutionalized mechanism within BRICS creates enduring capacity for generating intellectual resources supporting the bloc’s engagement with global challenges. The forum establishes precedent for subsequent presidencies to utilize Track II diplomacy and academic expertise in developing policy positions, building institutional memory and accumulated wisdom about what approaches have proven effective. The forum’s emphasis on interdisciplinary collaboration, on incorporating diverse perspectives and methodologies, and on translating research findings into policy relevant recommendations establishes a model that other coalitions of developing nations might emulate in seeking to amplify the intellectual voice of the Global South.
Conclusion: The Intellectual Foundation of a Multipolar World
The inaugural BRICS Academic Forum represents something profound that extends far beyond the sixty plus policy recommendations it generated or the summit it was designed to inform. It represents a declaration that the Global South possesses not merely the economic weight and demographic scale to demand a seat at the table of global governance, but the intellectual resources, scholarly traditions, and policy expertise to redesign the table itself. For two decades, the BRICS concept has evolved from an academic observation about emerging economies into a diplomatic coalition, and now into an institutional ecosystem with sophisticated mechanisms for generating, refining, and implementing distinctive policy alternatives.
India’s 2026 presidency, through its emphasis on resilience, innovation, cooperation, and sustainability, has created an enduring platform through which the intellectual resources of the Global South can be systematically mobilized. The scholars who gathered in New Delhi in April 2026 are not merely advisors to power. They are architects of a new global order, one recommendation at a time. As geopolitical fragmentation intensifies and established multilateral institutions struggle to maintain legitimacy, the work conducted at forums like this one will increasingly shape the choices available to policymakers, the frameworks governing international commerce, and the distribution of power and prosperity in the decades ahead. For anyone seeking to understand where the world is heading, the inaugural BRICS Academic Forum is not a footnote. It is a landmark. The question is no longer whether the Global South will reshape global governance, but how quickly and in whose image. The answers are being written now, in New Delhi, by scholars who understand that ideas, properly cultivated and strategically deployed, are the most powerful force in international affairs.
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