Russia offers guarantees to Algeria to renew its space fleet against Morocco
- Strategic benefits for Algiers and Moscow
- The aim is to renew Algeria's satellite fleet and capabilities
Algeria and Russia have just consolidated one of the key spheres of activity of their strategic partnership. President Vladimir Putin has done so by giving his blessing to the federal law validating the ratification by the Duma of the space agreement signed with veteran politician Abdelmadjid Tebboune, 79, who has been in power in Algiers since December 2019.
The intergovernmental agreement that comes into force is part of the fruit obtained by President Tebboune, both supreme head of the armed forces and minister of national defence, during his first official visit to Moscow at the end of 2023. Some six months earlier, the director general of the Russian Space Agency (Roscosmos), Yuri Borisov, had arrived in the country's capital and headquarters of the Algerian Space Agency, ASAL, to negotiate the terms of the draft pact.
The framework document defines the legal and organisational structure of cooperation that will henceforth govern and boost space relations between the two nations. It is valid for ten years, renewable automatically for successive five-year periods, unless expressly denounced by one of the parties. One point of the articles stipulates that ‘goods imported and exported under the agreement are exempt from customs duties and taxes’.
On the Kremlin side, responsibility for ensuring the implementation of the agreement lies with Roscosmos. On the Algerian side, it is under the control of ASAL, the official body created in January 2002 by the late President Abdelaziz Bouteflika to design national space policy and implement the programme of activities aimed at promoting and developing the economy and national security.
The terms of the space agreement mark a significant step in the strengthened Russian-Algerian strategic partnership in the field of dual-use technologies. The Kremlin has opened its doors and given guarantees to the Algiers authorities to acquire new-generation secure communications and spy satellites and place them in orbit from Russian cosmodromes.
Strategic benefits for Algiers and Moscow
With the facilities obtained in Moscow, the new strongman of the Algerian government, General Saïd Chengriha, who since November has been the ‘minister delegated by the Minister of National Defence’, will soon have two new platforms. Both will be able to match in resolution, if not surpass, the pair of spy satellites that Morocco has in orbit - Mohammed VI-A and VI-B, made by Airbus in France and launched in November 2017 and 2018, respectively - and those it acquired in 2024 from the manufacturer Israel Aerospace Industries (AIA).
Aware of the importance of having their own spacecraft, the interest of President Tebboune and his 75-year-old prime minister, Nadir Larbaoui, is focused on renewing their ageing fleet of satellites with another equipped with more advanced technologies and superior performance than Morocco's, both in terms of encrypted communications and in reconnaissance and earth observation systems.
The two North African dignitaries have also managed to include in the agreement that an Algerian citizen will travel into space aboard a Russian manned spacecraft. The document provides for the selection, education and training as cosmonauts of a pair of Algerian military pilots, with the expectation that Roscosmos will allow them to fly to the future Russian space station ROS, whose construction will begin in 2027.
The stipulations also include Russian-Algerian collaboration in the fields of satellite navigation, new technologies and associated information services, as well as in outer space science and exploration. In these fields, the main interest of Algerian researchers is in biology and space medicine, where they want to study the impact of long-duration space missions on human health.
The strengthening of space cooperation between Russia and Algeria represents a turning point for both countries. For the North African nation, it provides an opportunity to expand its technological capabilities, train military and civilian technicians in image analysis, and strengthen its national sovereignty and technological innovation. For Russia, it allows it to strengthen its relations with its partners in Africa and the Arab world, while demonstrating that, despite the human, economic and industrial toll of the war in Ukraine, Moscow remains a world leader in the space sector.
The aim is to renew Algeria's satellite fleet and capabilities
Algeria, along with Egypt, is one of the pioneering countries to demonstrate its interest in placing satellites in orbit and using them to promote its social and economic development, the monitoring of its oil and gas exploitation and its long borders with Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Mauritania, Niger, Mali and the former Spanish Sahara.
Algeria's political authorities are well aware of the importance of developing its national space sector and ASAL has a national programme covering the period 2020-2040. For the past four years, the Agency has been contemplating the launch in the short term of at least two new satellites: the high-resolution remote sensing satellites AlSat-3A and 3B and the secure government communications satellite AlcomSat-2, which are expected to be acquired from the Russian space industry.
They will take over from the four satellites that ASAL maintains in service: two Earth observation satellites - AlSat-2A and 2B, weighing just over 100 kilos, manufactured by Airbus Space Systems and launched in 2010 and 2016, respectively - one secure communications satellite - AlcomSat-1, a 5-tonne platform acquired from China and launched in December 2017 - and a nano technology demonstration satellite, Alsat-1N, weighing 4 kilos and the result of a collaboration with the UK Space Agency.
President Tebboune and ASAL's director general, the renowned remote sensing specialist Azzedine Oussedik, are very active in seeking the collaboration of other nations in the various aspects of space science and technology. The two men take advantage of occasions when heads of state or prime ministers of third countries visit the North African nation to seal cooperation agreements on outer space matters.
The most recent case took place at the beginning of December, during the official visit to Algeria of South African President Cyril Ramaphosa. His presence in Algiers enabled the head of ASAL and his counterpart from the South African Space Agency (SANSA), Humbulani Mudau, to sign a space cooperation agreement in the presence of the respective presidents.
Scenes with similar results have been repeated on other occasions. For example, during the visit of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in November 2023, who arrived in Algeria accompanied by the President of the Turkish Space Agency, Yusuf Kiraç. The same happened during the visit of the Prime Minister of Italy, Giorgia Meloni, who arrived in January of that year with the then President of the Italian Space Agency (ASI), Giorgio Saccoccia, to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Treaty of Friendship and Good Neighbourliness between the two countries.