According to Yuri Borisov, the Director-General of Roscosmos, Russia is establishing satellite launch contracts with countries in Africa, Europe, and Asia to foster its space sector’s prosperity and harness the beneficial advantages of the space industry for socioeconomic development.

“Countries like Algeria, Myanmar, Vietnam, Egypt and South Africa are working with us on different contracts to launch satellites, which we will design and put into orbit,” Yuri Borisov stated. In addition, he added that space exploration and its related activities should not be politicised, instead, cooperation among countries, including those that want to work with Russia on space-based technologies programmes, should be enhanced.

In the past, Roscosmos has partnered with Egypt, South Africa, and Algeria on numerous space-based projects for both educative and technological advancement purposes.

Furthermore, Roscosmos plans to build satellite constellations by producing 250-300 satellites a year by 2025 and a satellite a day by 2030. In addition, the Director-General stated that satellite communication would underpin Russia‘s economic growth and improve digital services.

On outer space sustainability, the Russian Director-General warned that defunct satellites orbiting the Earth’s lower orbit would pose an even more significant threat to space travel in the coming years. He estimated that over 7,500 active satellites are currently orbiting the Earth, and their number may rise by a factor of 10 by 2025.

In 2019, Roscosmos announced its plans to deploy optical-electronic monitoring stations in South Africa, Mexico and Chile to provide early warning about dangerous situations in near-Earth space and augment Russia’s Automated Warning System on Hazardous Situations in Outer Space (ASPOS OKP) as part of the project is to monitor dangerous approaches of orbital debris in outer space.