Mandela’s grandson told RT that many in Africa question why we deal in dollars

According to Nkosi Zwelivelile Mandela, one of the reasons why BRICS is gaining popularity is because it provides alternatives to the Western-dominated system.

According to a South African former leader Nelson Mandela’s grandson, the financial infrastructure that BRICS is promoting as a rival to Western-dominated institutions has a significant draw for possible new members.

Nkosi Zwelivelile Mandela stated in an interview on Tuesday that “the BRICS bank in particular has been attractive to many countries, which say: this is an alternative to the World Bank and the IMF, and it doesn’t come with the stringent interest rates.”

On the sidelines of the BRICS Summit in Johannesburg, the South African politician—who has been a member of parliament since 2009—interviewed RT. He was alluding to the New Development Bank (NDB), a global lender with its headquarters in Shanghai and which provides funding for infrastructure initiatives in underdeveloped countries.

The NDB is anticipated to soon add more members, similar to how BRICS, which presently consists of five nations, did. Former Brazilian President and current leader Dilma Rousseff suggested that four or five countries may join. The BRICS group of countries—Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—constitutes the bank’s five founding members. The bank has welcomed new members from Bangladesh, the UAE, and Egypt.

Many African nations, according to Mandela, are also interested in the BRICS currency project, which the group sees as a potential tool for facilitating international trade. It would offer a substitute for national currency swaps, which have up to now been the main method used by BRICS countries to replace the dollar and the euro in international trade.