There is already broad agreement amongst the BRICS partners on possible priority areas for cooperation. These include exchange of information on science, technology and innovation policies and programmes and promotion of innovation; food security and sustainable agriculture; nanotechnology; biotechnology and technology incubators.

The 3rd BRICS Summit in Sanya, China, in 2011 resulted in member-countries setting up working mechanisms that include a BRICS Science, Technology and Innovation senior officials meeting and the STI Working Group.

The BRICS ministers visited the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) site in Carnarvon, where the world's biggest and most sensitive radio telescope, will be jointly built by South Africa in collaboration with Australia and New Zealand.

The telescope is a combination of thousands of dishes and antennas, whose total collecting area will be approximately one square km, giving 50 times the sensitivity and 10,000 times the survey speed of the best current-day telescopes.

It will address unanswered fundamental questions about our universe, including how the first stars and galaxies formed after the big bang, how dark energy is accelerating the expansion of the universe, the role of magnetism in the cosmos, the nature of gravity, and the search for life beyond the earth.

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