The long-anticipated 15th Brics Summit gets underway today in Johannesburg. SA, as the chair, decided the theme of  the summit would be on how best the bloc can support the development of Africa so it can be a self-reliant continent living in peace and with full ownership and control of its resources and path to prosperity.

Indeed, if Africa can achieve such a milestone in the next decade, the strategic objectives of the Brics alliance would be achieved sooner than we think. A newly published book by the former UN Permanent Representative of Singapore, Kishore Mahbubani, titled The Asian 21st Century, provides a detailed account of how Asia is now the fastest growing economic region in the world, and how it has already surpassed the US as the world leader  in industrial production, infrastructure development and technological innovation...