Hello and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist. I'm your host, Jason Palmer.

Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

Just about anybody can be an influencer these days, and their influence, getting you to

buy stuff, can be pretty subtle. We examine how the law is catching up when it comes to

influencers who are children, if kid influencers. And in India's past dealing with human waste

was left to a cast of so-called untouchables. Our obituaries editor pays tribute to

Bindishwar Patak, who made it his mission to provide better lies for those people by providing

flush toilets to the public.

The Alliance known as BRICS, Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa just got bigger

and is going to need a new name. At the annual BRICS Summit in Johannesburg this week, South

Africa's president Cyril Ramaposa announced that six new countries would soon be joining.

We have consensus on the first phase of this expansion process and other phases will

follow. China, which has become the group's de facto driving force, was pleased. President

Xi Jinping hailed the expansion and talked up a new chapter of solidarity and cooperation.

This was always a mixed bag, originally seen as the developing countries that would soon

make up a big slice of the global economy. Plenty of other countries have wanted the prestige

and the bargaining power of membership, but there's more than economics driving these six

new kids in the block.

The BRICS Summit in Johannesburg was a symbol of how geopolitics is shifting. John McDermott

is the economist's chief Africa correspondent. The block invited six new members, underlining

how emerging powers are becoming more assertive on the global stage and how China is becoming

more assertive in courting those powers.

...