In a conference hall at Tshwane University of Technology in Pretoria, rows of young delegates from BRICS countries leaned forward as Sindisiwe Chikunga took the podium. The South African Minister in the Presidency for Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities did not open with trade or investment figures.
Instead, she urged deeper innovation and cultural collaboration, university exchanges, joint research, artistic projects, as the “infrastructure” that would make any economic partnership between Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa and their BRICS+ partners endure.
The 4th BRICS+ Youth Innovation Summit (9–10 April 2026), organized by the South African BRICS Youth Association in partnership with Tshwane University of Technology, brought together young entrepreneurs, researchers, and creatives under the theme “Harnessing Youth Innovation for Sustainable Development and Global Prosperity.”
Almost simultaneously, another initiative unfolded largely online: on 29–31 March, the EU National Institutes for Culture (EUNIC) launched the Spaces of Culture 2026 call for proposals. This EU-funded scheme invites consortia from Sub-Saharan Africa and Europe to design cultural relations projects based on co-creation and “fair, equal partnerships,” with a deadline of 21 June 2026.
This story matters now because South Africa’s hosting of the BRICS+ Youth Innovation Summit and the launch of Spaces of Culture 2026 illustrate how African youth and cultural actors are actively using both South–South and Africa–Europe platforms to renegotiate who designs cultural, knowledge, and innovation partnerships, and under which rules.
African Youth in Competing Cultural Orders
The Pretoria summit continues a pattern of South Africa using its BRICS chair ship period to emphasize youth-focused diplomacy. Chikunga’s keynote stressed that people-to-people ties in culture, education, research, and the application of indigenous knowledge must underpin the bloc’s long-term cooperation, including on artificial intelligence governance and norms for protecting citizen data.
South African officials have increasingly framed BRICS as more than a geopolitical or economic grouping: a space to build alternative circuits of knowledge and artistic collaboration less dependent on traditional North–South funding and standards. For young Africans, this offers pathways to circulate ideas, art, and technology with partners whose historical relationships to the continent differ from those of Europe or the United States.
In parallel, Europe is refining its cultural engagement with Africa. Spaces of Culture 2026, part of the Africa–Europe Partnerships for Culture programme implemented by EUNIC, will support up to seven multi-partner projects in Sub-Saharan Africa. Each project requires triangular partnerships (at least three African cultural or civil society organizations alongside European partners), with EU Delegations playing an active role.
Grants reach up to €50,000 per project with a minimum 5% co-funding, for implementation between September 2026 and August 2027. The call explicitly prioritizes co-creation, mutual listening, local ownership, and themes spanning arts, digital culture, heritage, education, gender, social inclusion, youth, and sustainability.
Together, the two initiatives map current options in African cultural and innovation diplomacy: South–South platforms emphasizing alternative models and Africa–Europe frameworks rebranded around equality and co-creation. African governments, institutions, and youth networks are not forced to choose one; the strategic question is how to leverage both to advance their own priorities.
Everyday Realities
Official rhetoric about innovation and equal partnerships meets more granular realities on the ground. At the BRICS+ Youth Summit, big themes, digital innovation, climate solutions, cultural industries, sat alongside practical hurdles: funding access, intellectual property arrangements, visa and cross-border mobility issues, and data governance.
When Chikunga called on youth to help shape AI rules and citizen data protection, she addressed a generation already navigating algorithms and platforms often built elsewhere.
For a young tech founder from Johannesburg or Nairobi, BRICS collaboration might mean joint research with Indian or Brazilian counterparts or venture exploration in Shanghai or São Paulo. For a cultural collective, it could open residencies or co-productions circulating work across Lusophone, Francophone, and Asian contexts rather than solely through European festivals.
Realizing these ideas still requires concrete agreements on rights, data, and sustained support, areas where youth frequently hold limited negotiating power.
The Spaces of Culture call presents a different set of demands. African organizations must form consortia meeting EUNIC criteria (triangular structure, EUNIC cluster involvement where possible, EU Delegation engagement) while safeguarding their priorities.
The administrative burden, detailed planning, co-funding, and EU compliance, can feel as heavy as the creative or community work itself, particularly for smaller or youth-led groups.
In practice, many African actors move fluidly between arenas. A Johannesburg youth network might send delegates to Pretoria and later join a Spaces of Culture consortium with partners in Maputo, Lisbon, and Berlin.
A Lusaka-based cultural NGO could view BRICS as a route to South–South solidarity on technology and climate, while seeing EU programmes as a source of resources and different visibility. The quietly revealing reality is that the real test is not which platform they choose, but who ultimately writes the forms, data rules, and contracts that determine what “collaboration” actually means.
Competing Policy Visions
The parallel tracks expose deeper tensions that remain unresolved.
One concerns the balance between South–South and North–South frameworks. BRICS advocates highlight alternative models of cooperation in culture, education, and innovation that reduce reliance on European or North American institutions.
Meanwhile, Spaces of Culture and similar EU initiatives present a reformed North–South relationship centered on mutuality and co-creation. African actors gain leverage from having multiple options, using BRICS to press Europe on data sovereignty or mobility, and vice versa, but risk being stretched thin when agendas and timelines diverge. Coordination capacity itself becomes a form of power.
A second fault line is the gap between youth rhetoric and actual decision-making authority. Both initiatives speak of youth as “key drivers” of innovation, sustainability, and cultural relations. Yet young people often operate within structures designed by states, multilateral bodies, or established networks.
The policy test is whether recommendations from Pretoria will meaningfully shape BRICS approaches to AI governance, intellectual property, or academic mobility, and whether youth-led African organizations can lead, rather than merely participate in, Spaces of Culture consortia.
A third tension involves cultural and digital sovereignty. Chikunga’s call for BRICS youth to influence AI rules and data protection reflects local-context priorities. EU programmes emphasize co-creation but operate within a regulatory framework that carries its own strong positions on data protection, platform governance, and cultural rights.
African youth and cultural actors must therefore navigate not only funding conditions but also differing normative expectations around free expression, privacy, content moderation, and the economics of digital culture.
As the BRICS+ Youth Innovation Summit concludes in Pretoria and the Spaces of Culture 2026 call moves toward its 21 June deadline, African youth and cultural organizations are already choosing platforms, framing projects, and selecting partners. These choices are never purely technical. They determine whose stories circulate, under which rules, and with what long-term consequences for agency over culture, knowledge, and innovation.
The months ahead will deliver partial outcomes: selected BRICS youth recommendations may feed into government or bank programmes, while seven Spaces of Culture projects will receive EU funding.
The larger unresolved question is whether African youth and cultural actors can convert this expanding menu of diplomatic platforms into genuine bargaining power, or whether, despite the language of equality and co-creation, the most consequential rules will continue to be written elsewhere.
