Dr. Fabio Soares; IPEA
Good afternoon. Always difficult to speak after lunch. We may need to wake up the audience a little bit. So, I'm going to be very succinct again. First of all, I would like to congratulate South Africa for the organisation of this face-to-face after three years on distance online. It was quite special, quite special for me as a researcher and now Director of International Studies at my Institute because I haven't been involved before with the BRICS Academic Forum. So it has been a learning experience in all senses, both interacting with the council and also learning from the academics from the other countries and also from my own institutes that have contributed to all the sessions during this forum. After the discussions in the Council and based on what I said in my opening speech, I'm glad to comment that we apparently have agreed, finally, to ask our leaders to, during the summit, to approve the idea put forward by South Africa to have a more systematic way to have this academic interaction and learning process. The idea put forward by South Africa is actually that we could have a more regular work and that we could have a memory organised by ourselves. It's a little bit embarrassing, I shall say, that we find many things about the BRICS, actually, in university, in other countries, summarising our documents and our discussions. That would be a key opportunity, actually, to make this conversation and the debates among the academics and the institutions that officially follow the academic forum a continuous process and a continuous learning process so that we interact not just in the key dates but we also can interact in terms of developing the research, the terms of reference, the concept notes, discussing the methodology, and later on discuss the conclusions that we can submit as a recommendation to our governments. Both have common challenges, and we have highlighted some of the challenges that we have. we must acknowledge that sometimes we don't have consensus, but at least we should be able to discuss the pros and cons of different approaches and different views on the issues that we discuss during the academic forum. So I think that is what marked the progress that we have achieved during these three days. And with that, I end my speech. I, once again, say thank you for South African hospitality. I wish it will endure until when our delegation departs.
03:36
Thank you very much.
