Journal of African Development

Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) disclosure has increasingly gained prominence as a key pillar of sustainable capital markets development in developing nations. The Business Responsibility and Sustainability Reporting (BRSR) framework, implemented by the Indian Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) since 2022-23 as a mandatory reporting regime for all companies ranked in the top 1,000 by market capitalisation, is one of the most extensive frameworks within the Global South. In this paper, a critical review is provided about the structure, implementation, and empirical results from the BRSR reporting framework with the intention of drawing insights about the implications for ESG disclosures in South Africa, especially in light of the JSE Sustainability Disclosure Guidance (2022) and King IV Report on Corporate Governance. Based on a mixed-methods approach to research that combines systematic content analysis of 280 BRSR reports, panel data regressions on 180 BSE-listed companies (2021-2024), and semi-structured interviews with 24 capital market regulators, institutional investors, and sustainability experts, the paper shows that mandatory ESG disclosure has led to significant improvements in disclosure quality (β = 0.43, p<0.001), decreased information asymmetries, and slight improvements in ESG performance scores. The analysis of cross-country institutional comparisons highlights similarities as well as differences in the structure of the two regulatory regimes, providing useful lessons for the adaptation of policy within the South African regulatory framework. This analysis has important ramifications for capital market regulators, listed companies, institutional investors, and international organisations that seek to facilitate sustainable development through non-financial reporting