Foreign airlines enjoy 80% market share in Africa

Despite the huge potentials, African carriers are playing second fiddle to foreign airlines, which are said to be controlling 80 per cent of the region’s aviation market, leaving the remaining 20 per cent for their Africans counterparts.

This has triggered concern of huge imbalance between the pair. Aviation experts, however, expressed disappointment with the situation, saying it had slowed aviation growth despite Africa’s over one billion population.

To them, the domination of the market by these mega airlines has stunted the growth of aviation in the region. The experts noted that out of $10 billion annual profit made by foreign airlines from Africa, only 20 per cent of that amount remains with dominant African airlines such as Ethiopian Airlines, Egypt Air, Kenya Airways, Air Maroc, Rwandair, Arik, and Medview among other airlines operating in and out of the continent.

Equally worrisome is the disclosure that these carriers contribute only two per cent to global aviation market, with Africa topping the number of air crashes in the world. An airline operator, who spoke to woleshadare.net on condition of anonymity, described the problem as self-inflicted, adding that the refusal of governments in the region to liberalise their skies for free entry and exit for African airlines has cost them dearly with monumental effect on the sector.

He added that policies enunciated and implemented by African governments tend to be anti-business with serious problem hitting the profitability of the continent’s airlines. “African airlines are taking crumbs from the market they should control. But how can they control the market when they do not have good connectivity even within Africa.

They are bleeding just as they do not have the resources to compete for instance, with the likes of Emirates, British Airways, Delta, United Airlines Lufthansa, Qatar, Air France and many other mega carriers,” the source added. “There is always policy summer-sault in many countries, whereby policies change as new aviation ministers are appointed.

Most policies are not followed through but changed midway. Finally, there is the attitude of Africans to stand against their own, but open doors to foreign airlines, an attitude that is attributed to colonial mentality”.

According to a recent World Bank report on air transport in Africa, the continent is home to 12 per cent of the world’s people, but it accounts for less than one per cent of the global air service market.

Part of the reasons for Africa’s under-served status, according to World Bank study, is that it refused to open its skies by not implementing the Yamoussoukro Decision, which was adopted by African states in 1988 aimed at libralising the continent’s airspace, as many African countries restrict their air services markets to protect the share held by state-owned air carriers that were established in the 1960s, many of which had gone under.

The World Bank study also said that liberalising air transport in the continent would deliver improved safety, lower fares and increase traffic in Africa. Similarly, the Chief Executive Officer of African Aviation Services Limited and former Secretary General of African Airlines Association (AFRAA), Nick Fadugba, recently told this newspaper at an aviation summit in Addis Ababa that African Heads of State and Government approved the Yamoussoukro Decision (YD) in 2000 as legally binding instrument on all African Union member states and according to the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), the YD was intended to create a conducive environment for the development and provision of safe, reliable and affordable air transport services in Africa.

Fadugba therefore called on the African States and the African Union to launch African aviation initiative that could move the continent forward.

“It is not acceptable for Africa to have only two per cent of the world aviation market. Inter nation rivalry should be discouraged. You will recall that Yamoussoukro Decision was established in 1988, but over 20 years later it is yet to be fully implemented. We are in danger of being a laughing stock to the rest of the world,” he said.

Fadugba said it was ironic that the main beneficiaries of Africa’s recent air traffic growth have been non-African airlines, adding that air transport is critical to Africa’s economic advancement and “I believe that African government and African Union should take urgent steps to help remove the hurdles that hinder the growth of commercial airlines, as well as business and general aviation operators.”

He noted that the creation of single African aviation market should be a priority in African Union Agenda 2063, adding that the continent should be one market governed by continental rules with supranational institutions to enforce these rules and with an African external aviation policy when dealing with third parties outside the continent.