The new spice route: Why South Africa’s most valuable import from India isn’t oil or vehicles
By Eshmael Mpabanga, Country Head, Intellect Design Arena South Africa
The recent G20 summit in Johannesburg confirmed a tectonic shift that economists have been tracking for two decades. In 1995, the G7 nations commanded nearly 45% of global GDP, while the (to be) BRICS bloc held just under 17%. By 2025, that balance has inverted: the G7 share has shrunk to roughly 28%, while BRICS nations now account for over 34% of the global economy.
This statistical crossover is not just an academic footnote, though, it is the definitive signal that the centre of economic gravity has moved. For South Africa and India, two nations anchoring this new reality, the question isn’t just about whether we should trade, but what we should trade.
For decades, the Johannesburg-New Delhi corridor has been defined by commodities. We send coal, gold, and manganese east; they send refined petroleum, pharmaceuticals, and vehicles west. While these material exchanges remain vital – total bilateral trade now hovers near $19 billion – they represent the economy of the 20th century. The trade deal that will define the next decade wasn’t signed in a shipping container terminal, but in the breakaway sessions of the G20: the export of Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI).
The blueprint as a commodity
India has achieved something in the last ten years that established Western economies struggled to do in thirty: it successfully digitised a population of 1.4 billion people, dragging millions into the formal economy almost overnight. It did not do this by building more brick-and-mortar bank branches. It did it by building the “India Stack” – a set of open APIs and digital public goods that allowed government, banks, and businesses to verify identity and move money instantly, at near-zero cost.
This is the “new spice” of our trade relationship. South Africa does not need to import India’s bankers – what we do need to import is their architectural philosophy.
We are already seeing the first green shoots of this. PayShap, our rapid payments programme, mirrors the logic of India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI). But we are currently iterating where India is already leapfrogging. While we celebrate transaction volumes, we must acknowledge that our banking infrastructure is still suffering from what I call the “Digital Banking Paradox”.
The hidden cost of legacy trade
South African banks have never looked more digital on the surface. Our mobile apps are world-class, and our front-end interfaces are seamless. Yet, behind this glass screen lies a stubborn truth: many of our financial institutions still run on decades-old foundations. We have essentially placed a Ferrari dashboard on a 1990s engine.
This “patchwork era” of banking – where legacy mainframes are wrapped in layers of APIs to look modern – creates friction. It drives up the cost of technology, sometimes consuming up to 80% of IT budgets just to keep the lights on. More critically for trade, it slows down the cross-border settlement and liquidity management that modern commerce demands.
If South Africa wants to be the gateway to the African continent for BRICS trade, we cannot run our financial rails on legacy code. We need “architectural reinvention”. This is where the true value of the SA-India partnership lies. It is an exchange of intellectual property that allows South African institutions to bypass the “patchwork” phase and move directly to what we at Intellect Design Arena Limited call the intersection of “Design Thinking” and “First Principles Thinking“.
Sovereignty through code
The G20 discussions highlighted a desire among Global South nations for digital sovereignty. We want to own our payment rails, our data, and our financial destiny. Adopting an “India Stack” mentality is not about replacing Western dependency with Asian dependency. It is about adopting a “composable” architecture – a design philosophy where banking systems are built like Lego blocks rather than monoliths.
In India, we saw this approach reduce technology costs for institutions by up to 30% while cutting new product launch times from months to weeks. For a South African bank, this means the ability to launch a new trade finance product for SMEs in weeks, not years. It means municipalities could streamline revenue collection with the same efficiency as a private fintech.
From diplomacy to delivery
The diplomatic handshakes at the G20 were necessary, but the real work now moves to the CIOs and CTOs of our financial sector. The “trade” we need to focus on is the implementation of AI-first banking architectures that can handle the volume and velocity of a BRICS-led global economy.
True transformation begins when institutions move from digital-first to AI-First Banking, where intelligence is not an accessory but the organising principle.
AI-First Banking reimagines architecture as a living, learning system: composable, contextual, and continuously evolving. Each component interacts through intelligent orchestration, allowing the enterprise to sense, decide, and act in real time.
At Intellect, this shift is embodied in eMACH.ai, a composable and contextual open finance platform built on First Principles Thinking. Instead of automating old processes, eMACH.ai enables banks to deconstruct legacy systems into modular microservices that can be intelligently recomposed to suit evolving business models.
This approach replaces linear transformation with architectural reinvention.
South Africa has the sophistication to adopt this. We have a robust regulatory framework and a highly skilled financial sector. What we have lacked is the courage to tear down the legacy debt that slows us down. India has shown us that you can rebuild the plane while flying it, provided you have the right blueprint.
As we look toward 2030, let us not measure the success of our bilateral ties solely by the tonnage of coal or the number of cars moving through Durban and Mumbai. Let us measure it by how quickly a growing township-business in Soweto can settle a payment with a supplier in Bangalore. That is the trade infrastructure that will deliver the inclusive growth we were promised.
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About the author
Eshmael Mpabanga is the Country Head of Intellect Design Arena South Africa. He leads the company’s strategic expansion in the region, focusing on delivering composable, AI-led financial technology solutions.
