“We keep building up proactive cooperation with a majority of countries in northern Africa and with states south of the Sahara desert. The overall value of orders for Russian military products the African countries account for exceeds $21 billion,” said Demchenko, who leads Rosoboronexport’s delegation to the weapons show.

Rosoboronexport, he said, has established lasting military-technical ties with Angola, Egypt, Zimbabwe, Mali, Uganda and other countries. Of late, there was good progress towards closer contacts with Namibia, Nigeria, Cameroon, Mozambique, Tanzania and Equatorial Guinea.

“Rosoboronexport specialists expect foreign delegations may display great interest in the combat and training plane Yakovlev-130, helicopter gunship Mi-28NE, military transport plane Ilyushin-76MD-90A, and helicopter gunship Mi-35. Of considerable interest to visitors will be the diesel-electric submarine of project 636 and armored personnel carrier BTR-82A,” Rosoboronexport’s press-service has said. For the first time ever the Russian arms exporter will display a multimedia virtual reality simulator project for the reconnaissance and attack helicopter Ka-52.

Earlier, last March, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at a meeting of the commission for military-technical cooperation with foreign states that Russia’s military hardware export contracts had reached $56 billion. The head of the corporation Rostec Sergey Chemezov said that Russia in January-August 2016 exported more than $7 billion of military products.