The woman quietly leading a BRICS bank revolution

AllAfrica

21-06-2025

Former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff is nearing the end of her first term as head of the New Development Bank (NDB), also known as the BRICS Bank, which is set to conclude in July. She has been re-elected for another two-year term, while Brazil will take over the BRICS presidency later this year.
Appointed in early 2023, Rousseff's presidency of the Shanghai-based NDB has been groundbreaking in many respects. She was not only the first woman to lead the NDB but also the first former head of state to hold the position.
As one of the bank's original architects – she helped found the NDB in 2014 during her presidency of Brazil – Rousseff viewed the institution as a tool to challenge Western dominance in development finance. She initially expressed a desire to boost investment in environmental projects and to circumvent the 'geopolitical impact of Western retaliations against Russia.'
In addition, she made clear that NDB financing would come 'without imposing conditionalities' on borrower nations, a direct contrast to traditional Western-led institutions. The idea was that developing countries should have access to funds without the political or austerity strings often attached by the likes of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) or World Bank.
Rousseff has made local currency lending central to her agenda, aiming for 30% of NDB loans in members' own currencies by 2026, reducing dependence on the US dollar and sidestepping the risks of Western sanctions in the process.
By late 2023, Rousseff touted a pipeline of 76 new projects worth US$18.2 billion for 2023-24, on top of the 98 projects worth $33 billion the NDB had reportedly already financed.
Her tenure kicked off with a symbolic visit from Brazil's President Lula in Shanghai in April 2023, where Lula attended her inauguration ceremony. At the ceremony, Lula praised the NDB as a partnership of emerging nations 'very different from traditional banks dominated by developed countries,' and expressed high hopes that it could help create a world with less poverty and inequality under Rousseff's watch.
Her presence at the G20, alongside leaders of the world's largest economies, signaled the NDB's growing profile on the global stage. Earlier in 2024, Rousseff had even traveled to Russia to attend the St Petersburg International Economic Forum, where de-dollarization and alternative financial architectures were key themes.
Rousseff has not shied away from using her political stature to give the NDB a seat at tables traditionally dominated by Western-led institutions. She has signaled to members and prospective members alike that the NDB under her leadership is open for business.
Brazil was a key testing case for the NDB's rising emergency finance efforts. In May 2024, following devastating storms and floods in southern Brazil, she announced that the NDB would extend an aid package of $1.1 billion to rebuild infrastructure in Rio Grande do Sul state.
The funding, coordinated in partnership with Brazilian public banks, was earmarked for everything from small business recovery to new roads, bridges and sanitation systems in the disaster-hit areas. Such a rapid mobilization of over a billion US dollars was unprecedented for the NDB in response to a member's natural disaster.
Under her leadership, the NDB has aligned closely with China's priorities, reflecting the NDB's utility as a tool for China to use international institutions to achieve revisionist goals. During Rousseff's first weeks in Shanghai, Brazil and China reached an agreement to set up a clearinghouse to conduct trade in Chinese yuan and Brazilian reals, thereby reducing their dollar dependence.
In May 2025, the People's Bank of China and Brazil's Central Bank signed a renewed local-currency swap agreement worth 190 billion yuan, about $27.7 billion, valid for five years and extendable.
In 2024 and so far in 2025, China-Brazil trade has increased by about 10% year to year, with Rousseff being instrumental in China-Brazil dealings. Lula's government has treated the NDB as an extension of its strategic partnership with China, a venue through which Chinese capital can more safely flow into Brazilian projects under multilateral cover.
By steering the bank to focus on local-currency lending and alternative payment systems, Rousseff indirectly aided Moscow's goal of a financial safety net outside of the US's reach. However, Russian entities themselves have not received new NDB loans since the Ukraine war began.
India and South Africa, for their part, benefited from the continuation of multi-billion-dollar NDB funding for infrastructure, transportation and renewable energy projects but saw no obvious special boost under Rousseff compared to prior NDB leadership.
If anything, some Indian analysts quietly fretted that the Rousseff-led bank became too closely aligned with China and Brazil's political understanding, potentially at India's expense, a reflection of India's wariness of overt anti-West posturing by BRICS.
Perhaps the biggest new entrant on Rousseff's watch was Indonesia (also a G20 member), which, according to BRICS officials, was approved for NDB membership by early 2025. Rousseff has actively promoted this expansion, seeing it as part of her legacy of making the NDB 'a bank of the Global South' in substance.
Still, Rousseff's appointment was polarizing from the start. Critics in Brazil's right-wing opposition accused Lula of provoking the US and aligning too closely with autocracies, while her 2016 impeachment and praise of China's governance model made her a controversial figure abroad.
Externally, Rousseff had to manage the fallout from Russia's war in Ukraine, which forced the NDB to suspend Russian loans to maintain compliance with global markets. This geopolitical balancing act, along with rising interest rates, constrained the bank's ability to expand lending.
Nonetheless, the NDB preserved its AA+ rating from S&P Global, even as Rousseff faced pressure to prove that an emerging-market-led bank could operate with high standards under global scrutiny.
Rousseff was originally expected to step down in July 2025, with Russia set to nominate her successor as part of BRICS' rotating presidency system. But due to sanctions and geopolitical constraints, which could have potentially tanked the BRICS' prospects and more neutral image as a viable international bloc, Moscow backed her continuation. In March 2025, the NDB's Board of Governors unanimously reappointed Rousseff for a second term.
Rousseff has redefined the NDB's presidency and helped elevate the bank as a key lever in China and the Global South's revisionist goals against Western financial dominance. Under her leadership, the NDB has deepened alignment with Beijing's broader strategy of building alternative global governance institutions, ones that reflect multipolarity and reduce dependence on the US-led financial institutions.
Rousseff's enthusiastic support for de-dollarization, promotion of yuan- and real-denominated lending, and facilitation of Chinese-backed infrastructure in Latin America, particularly in Brazil, positioned the NDB as a complement to China's Belt and Road Initiative in a post-Pax Americana order.
Looking ahead, Rousseff will likely stay focused on infrastructure, sustainability and social inclusion, though with perhaps sharper priorities. She reportedly plans to accelerate de-dollarization by expanding local currency lending, supporting tools like BRICS swap lines and digital payments. By any measure, these plans represent a seismic shift in development finance.
Membership expansion is also likely, with countries like Saudi Arabia and Argentina in focus, along with deeper ties to regional banks like the Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean (CAF) and the African Development Bank. But her second term will also test her ability to manage global financial volatility and protect the bank's stability amid rising debt and geopolitical uncertainty.
To date, and not without criticism, Rousseff has been instrumental in positioning the NDB as a challenger to Western financial hegemony, offering real competition and choice to countries in the Global South previously subjugated by an often oppressive world lending system. And with that helped to usher in a quiet but consequential revolution in the international order.
Joseph Bouchard is a journalist and researcher from Québec covering security and geopolitics in Latin America. His articles have appeared in Reason, The Diplomat, The National Interest, Le Devoir and RealClearPolitics. He is an incoming PhD student in politics at the University of Virginia and SSHRC doctoral fellow on Latin American politics.