The Brian Lair Show on WNYC. Welcome back, everybody.

I'm Brigid Bergen, filling in for Brian today. Today marks the start of the Bricks Summit,

bringing together heads of state from five non-Western major economic powers.

We're talking Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

They'll meet in person over three days in Johannesburg.

Notably, President Vladimir Putin of Russia is unable to appear in person due to an arrest warrant

issued by the International Criminal Court over war crimes in Ukraine.

He's attending via video call instead. To understand the goals of the individual Bricks'

member states at this summit, as well as the broader ambitions of the group as a whole,

I'm joined by Semicor's Africa editor, Yinka Adegoke. Yinka, welcome back to

WNYC. Thank you for having me.

Can you start us off with the basics? When was Bricks formed and for what purpose?

So, Bricks was formed in 2009. It actually came out of a paper by a Goldman Sachs economist who

coined the term Bricks, you know, Brazil, Russia, India, China initially.

And in 2010, South Africa was added to make it the, you know, Bricks, the S on the end of that

of a brick. And the idea was, you know, basically economic cooperation,

you know, multilateral development, the kinds of ambitions you'd expect from these emerging

economies, right? Initially, I'm very early on, it was, as I say, it was very much about the

economic cooperation, but over time, you know, there's been an emphasis on sort of geopolitical

influence. Russia in particular has always kind of wanted that and China more so in recent years

on the Xi Jinping. Can you talk a little bit and you're starting to get into it, but the power

of the member nations in this group and how they compare in population size and maybe GDP to say

...