Last week, the Brics countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – formed the New Development Bank (the Brics bank). They hope it will serve as an alternative international financial system to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Jason Hickel, an academic at the London School of Economics, argues the World Bank and IMF serve the interests of the global north while harming that of the south. "They specifically preclude poor countries from using the basic strategies that western countries used to develop their own economies."

He adds: "This is why the World Bank is so valued by the US government and Wall Street: because it is instrumental to expanding the sphere of western capitalism, a role not dissimilar to that which colonialism once played for Europe."

But academic William Gumede says the bank will not necessarily be good for developing countries. He says: "there is no guarantee that a Brics bank would not attach conditions as onerous as those of the World Bank or other development banks."

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