Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) and Coronavirus Pandemic (COVID-19) have affected the international trade environment and e-commerce activities in the world. This article describes the effect of the restrictions caused by COVID-19 and facilities provided by the Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications within the scope of 4 th Industrial Revolution (4IR) in the economy of BRICS member countries and South Africa (SA). A performance evaluation was performed with the non-positivist multi-criteria decision-making techniques. SA performance is analyzed by comparing the data announced by the public and private authorities of BRICS member countries due to the unemployment and e-commerce increase monitored in the global perspective by using a purposeful criterion selection design. The importance of AI and its online use provided not only the stream of the commercial activities but also promoted the sustainability in the operations and contributed to increase the competitive power due to the restrictions increased by the pandemic. While the restriction of the economic activities was increasing its speed due to COVID-19, it accelerated the growth of the e-commerce platforms in the phase of transition to the digital. As the result of the South Africa analysis; since the science, technology, engineering and mathematics, national and international trade relations are an integral part of the modules related with 4IR, South African businesses should pay attention to develop an e-commerce model. Problems like infrastructure insufficiency in access to electronic devices, data and internet brought the difficulties experienced in e-commerce applications into the forefront in the process of COVID-19 restrictions.
