AU gives continent-wide air travel a long-awaited boost
Passengers, fasten your seatbelts: African aviation is finally for take off.
That’s the message from the recent African Union (AU) summit in Addis Ababa, where, amid much fanfare, the Single African Air Transport Market was launched, three decades after the idea was first approved.
Despite boasting 15% of the world’s population, Africa accounts for just 3% of global air traffic. That’s because flights are expensive and often inconvenient. Frequent flyers will be all too familiar with the absurdities inherent in African air travel — often it is quicker and cheaper to fly to the other side of the world than it is to hop to a neighbouring country.
That’s because airlines are hampered by tough regulations, safety concerns and poor governance. On some routes between African countries, airlines face restrictions on how many passengers they can carry; on others, private airlines are prevented or priced out from competing with inefficient national flag carriers. These restrictions are often designed to protect the flag carriers, with a detrimental effect on the industry as a whole.
“The cost-benefit analysis of protecting a few jobs compared with the total economic benefits of opening up is just not there,” said David Kajange, the head of the AU’s transport and tourism division, speaking to the Financial Times. “Aviation is a luxury product in Africa but in the US and Europe anyone can go anywhere for a weekend. That’s what we want here.”
The new single aviation market is supposed to make this happen by opening up Africa’s skies — allowing more planes on more routes to more countries, and getting rid of some of the red tape that prevents this from happening.
In theory, it should make it easier to travel between African countries than ever before.
And, crucially, cheaper. AU officials claim that the price of the average intracontinental ticket may drop by as much as 30% within six months.
It’s not quite as straightforward as that, of course. So far, only 23 countries, of the AU’s 55 member states, have signed up to the single aviation market (although this does include Ethiopia, Kenya and South Africa, which host the continent’s three largest airlines).
It also remains to be seen whether the continental body can implement the new policy. Another flagship trade policy, the Continental Free Trade Area, has so far failed to exist outside the AU’s collective imagination.
Tlali Tlali, SAA’s spokesperson, said: “Should the [single aviation market] be implemented in the manner that it has been envisaged, it will enable not only South African Airways but [also] other African carriers access to markets that have previously not been possible due in certain cases to the restrictive nature of the African continent.”