Cape Town: India can be a "very adequate leader" of the Global South as the country has "already been a global power," Geopolitical expert Velina Tchakarova said here on Sunday.

After addressing the second day of the 'Cape Town Conversation' on Sunday, she said, "I think that India can be a very adequate leader of the Global South. It could be an adequate leader because it has suffered a lot in the past, but it has already been a global power."

"So in a sense, I think that a lot of countries representing the Global South, from Latin America to Africa and to the Asian continent, will accept leadership coming from India," she added.

She further told ANI, " I think that India itself is right now dealing more or less with itself because India is on the rise. India is en route to becoming one of the key global players."

She further explained that this means that India has to find its own position in the world. "It will be different, I argue, from the one during the Cold War when it was a leader of the non-alignment movement. So this time, I think that India doesn't have the luxury of being just non-aligned..."

Tchakarova told ANI that this kind of leadership will be the "most authentic that the Global South will accept because they need another narrative..."

She also stressed that India keeps its promises.

She said, "There is a balance, a kind of fairer presentation of the Global South, so we see India keeping its promises because India announced that it wants to be an advocate of the Global South, of seven billion people around the world..."

Meanwhile, she also highlighted the upcoming COP28 meeting in the UAE, stressing that it is a "very important thing for the region. We know for a fact that several of the countries in the region are very open to the idea of transitioning. And these are fossil fuel powerhouses. We talk about the UAE. We talk about Saudi Arabia..."

She further said that these are the countries that have been invited to BRICS, adding that BRICS will expand next year.

"It will turn into BRICS Plus. And it's going to probably speculate that it's going to turn into the next commodities powerhouse, including fossil fuels because we know for a fact that countries like China and India will still rely on fossil fuels next to increasing their share of renewables for the sake of their economic growth," she said.