Russia and China Compete for Africa With Arms and Solar Panels as Iran Says Blockades No Longer Work

Alexander Mikheyev, chief executive of the Russian state arms exporter Rosoboronexport, said African interest in Russian weapons grows every year and that African armed forces remain long-standing users of Soviet and Russian equipment, TASS reported. The claim comes from the seller and no independent order figures accompany it, but African procurement patterns have been shaped for decades by the maintenance and training costs of switching platforms.

On the civilian side, the South China Morning Post reported that Chinese solar and battery equipment is winning African energy contracts against American promotion of oil and gas development, and that cost is the deciding factor for most governments on the continent rather than any position on climate policy. Chinese manufacturers can quote a delivered price per unit of installed capacity that United States exporters cannot match.

From Tehran, the head of the Iran-Russia joint chamber of commerce told Iran's state news agency, IRNA, that the purpose of American sanctions is to raise the cost of Iranian transactions rather than to stop them, and that in a multipolar world an absolute economic blockade is difficult to sustain. He argued that shared commercial interest between states is the practical answer, and called for reducing the cost of Iranian foreign trade.

Those three statements describe one process from three positions. Sanctions and export controls raise the cost of using the dominant financial and industrial network, and every increase in that cost improves the relative position of an alternative supplier who does not require access to it. The alternative is more expensive in absolute terms and less capable, which is why it did not win before, and it wins now because the comparison has changed.