South Africa, the continent’s biggest arms exporting country, specialises in armoured military vehicles.
Private South African companies, such as Paramount, have been largely responsible for the country’s arms export numbers of late, while state-owned Denel has been trying to avoid bankruptcy.
Paramount – a massive South African military technology producer (which moved its headquarters from Sandton to Abu Dhabi) – produces the Maatla, Maurauder, and Mbombe armoured vehicles. More than 600 of these vehicles were sold in the past 10 years to countries including India, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Jordan, Singapore and Mozambique, according to the Stockholm International Peace Institute’s (Sipri’s) arms transfer database.
The Democratic Republic of Congo bought 20 Mbombe-4 and 24 Maatla vehicles from South Africa in 2023.
A smaller South African company, OTT Technologies, sold a number of Puma M-36 armoured vehicles in the past four years: 12 to Benin, 8 to Niger, 18 to Senegal and 24 to the African Union for peacekeeping in Senegal.
Another private company, DCD Protected Mobility sold 79 Springbuck-SD to Cote d’Ivoire.

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