Participants of BRICS Youth Innovation Summit 2025 discuss role of innovation in creating sustainable future

The BRICS Youth Innovation Summit 2025 took place in Cape Town, gathering young participants, policymakers, and sector leaders from Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. Organised by the South African BRICS Youth Association (SABYA), the two-day event focused on innovation and sustainability under the theme "Innovation for the Future: Technology for Sustainability and Social Good”. TV BRICS is the international media partner of the event.

Raymond Matlala, Executive Chairman of SABYA, opened the event by highlighting the importance of supporting young people through initiatives like this:

“Empowering young innovators through platforms like the BRICS Youth Innovation Summit is not just an investment in their future, but a strategic imperative for sustainable development across our nations,” he said.

He also told about the criteria used to select the best projects in an exclusive commentary for TV BRICS.

"We look at a number of categories: we evaluate the originality of the idea, mobility, scalability, its practicality, and innovativeness. We also consider how the idea will solve social problems, because the theme of the summit is about how to use innovation to create social good," he revealed.

The summit featured keynote addresses, panel discussions, and demonstrations of youth-led projects. Themes included food security, circular economy, artificial intelligence, and digital transformation. Technologies on display ranged from flood-warning systems and sustainable fuel alternatives to smart farming platforms and chatbots.

Deputy Minster Employment and Labour of South Africa Judith Nemadzinga Tshabalala told TV BRICS about the government's key priorities for the BRICS Youth Innovation Summit 2025 and how they align with South Africa's broader employment and labour goals.

"Priorities have been around job creation, finding sustainable employment and part of those and how we infuse it into the priorities [...]. We've got matters of innovation and sustainability, and that's what we are cutting across in the G20. We need to have sustainability in South Africa," she stated.

The BRICS Youth Innovation Summit aims to create a dynamic platform where emerging startups can pool their technological capabilities, share best practices and jointly develop sustainable solutions to address regional and global challenges.