A series of road shows were kicked off across South Africa on Tuesday as part of a public campaign to promote the 5th BRICS Summit later this month in Durban and Pretoria's BRICS membership.

The BRICS Summit Public Awareness Roadshow took place simultaneously in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal Provice, Cape Town, Western Cape Province and Johannesburg, Gauteng Province. Similar road shows have been held in other provinces.

As the host country, South Africa has placed great expectations on the summit which will highlight the African agenda. It will be the first time that African affairs are placed high on the agenda of BRICS summits.

South Africa expects to take advantage of its BRICS membership to benefit the entire African continent.

The South African government has, for the first time, invited the African Union (AU) and African regional economies to the summit, which will include a first dialogue between BRICS Leaders and African heads of state and government from the eight Regional Economic Communities (RECs) and Presidential Infrastructure Champion Initiative (PICIs) under the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD).

The country's position going into the summit is to align BRICS member countries' interests in supporting the integration agenda in Africa, and not just focusing on access to the country's resources, the government said.

Provincial governments are also looking forward to reaping benefits from the summit.

"In essence, BRICS Summit serves as a platform on which synergies between the economy of KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) and economies of member nations will be strengthened. We want to promote KZN as a destination for foreign direct investment," KZN Premier Zweli Mkhize said whiling launching the road show in Durban.

With the two harbous, Richards Bay and Durban, the Dube Trade Port as well as the King Shaka International Airport, KZN could create "win-win partnerships for our sister countries in our region," Mkhize said.

"As the undisputed gateway into the rest of Africa and other continents, we believe that we can use the province of KwaZulu- Natal not only for its own benefit, but for the benefit of other provinces as well as countries within the region," Mkhize's office said in a statement.

BRICS is an acronym for the grouping of the world's leading emerging economies, namely Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

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