Excellency Prime Minister Narendra Modi, your Excellencies, heads of states and government and representatives of bricks partner countries and heads of various international organizations, the Secretary General of the United Nations, Ladies and gentlemen, the 20th anniversary of BRICS is a moment to reaffirm our commitment to foster global economic growth through deeper cooperation and a more ambitious agenda ranging from science, technology and innovation to sustainable development and economic transformation. We live in a rapidly changing world that contains both risks and opportunity. The achievement of inclusive growth requires that we address persistent global challenges such as poverty and inequality. while responding to the devastating effects of conflicts that continue to take place around the world. Also, challenges such as climate change and the rapid advance of artificial intelligence. The increasing frequency and intensity of climate related disasters threaten to reverse hard one development gains and deepen inequality. Resilience is therefore essential for inclusive growth and human development. We commend India for prioritizing resilience which links directly to the disaster risk reduction outcomes of South Africa's G20 presidency. We must integrate disaster risk reduction caused by climate change into macroeconomic policy, climate financing and sustainable infrastructure. Developing economy countries must have equitable access to the technologies, the finance and capacity to withstand future shocks. The global energy transition must prioritize reskilling, protecting livelihoods, and anchoring new industries that generate quality jobs. It is important that markets for critical minerals and transition technologies are built on transparency and that value chains are diversified and are responsible to ensure inclusive growth in Africa and other regions of the world. The beneficiation of value addition to minerals that are extracted from the African soil must take place at so at source. The capabilities of artificial intelligence models are becoming increasingly more powerful and are rapidly reshaping almost every area of economic and social life. Artificial intelligence and associated technologies have the potential to usher in a new era of productivity and human progress. If used effectively and responsibly, artificial intelligence can support our efforts to reduce inequality, poverty and un underdevelopment. It is showing that it has the potential and the capability to transform medicine, education, scientific discovery, agriculture, productivity and development. But we must listen carefully to what those who are developing the most powerful AI systems are themselves telling us. They are warning against systems that are capable of advanced cyber operations, assistance in biological weapons development, autonomous action, manipulation, mass surveillance, disruption of employment, and ultimately systems whose capabilities may become difficult for human beings to control. We should therefore neither fear AI nor approach it recklessly. Our responsibility is to ensure that human governance advances as rapidly as artificial intelligence itself. We agree with those in the industry in the AI industry that is such as Dario Ammo, the CEO of Anthropic, who are arguing that AI companies should be subject to formal external checks, to audits, and to government authority. Such oversight is standard practice in other industries whose activities have a significant impact on human safety and well-being such as aviation, pharmaceuticals, nuclear power and financial institutions. We must never reach a situation where technological capability has moved beyond our capacity to understand it, supervise it and control it. South Africa accordingly proposes that bricks should establish an international mechanism for the independent scientific evaluation of AI. This should be backed by meaningful human control principles, mandatory reporting of serious incidents and there have been serious incidents already. Progressively stronger safeguards such as capability increases and sim simultaneous investment in sovereign AI capacity for developing economy countries. We agree with what President Xi Jinping has just proposed on establishing an AI ecosystem for bricks. We support continued scientific oper cooperation in initiatives such as the bricks intelligence telescope and data network as well as the bricks vaccine research and development center. We must strengthen medical sovereignty, vaccine development, genomic surveillance and diagnostic capabilities for the global south. We must work together to transform agriculture through innovation. Economic and financial cooperation is at the center of resilience that we seek. South Africa supports a balanced and gradual expansion of the new development bank. We welcome continued discussion of the proposed new investment platform and the BRICS multilateral guarantees initiative. BRICS must press ahead with greater use of local currencies, stronger crossborder systems and deeper financial interconnectivity. As BRICS enters its third decade, it must be more ambitious. Our engagement with partner countries should spur deeper cooperation particularly in public health, education, science and technology. I wish to conclude with a rling call by Indian poet, activist and leader Miss Sarroini Naidu who said we want deeper sincerity of motive, a greater courage in speech and earnestness in action. I thank you.