Nigeria removes intra-African flight barriers

• B/Faso joins race, AFCAC to present report

Nigeria and Burkina Faso have become the latest African states to sign the memorandum of implementation (MOI) for the Single African Air Transport Market (SAATM), removing all bilateral restrictions on intra-African flights.

African air-transport liberalization is based on the 1999 Yamoussoukro Decision (YD), which was signed by 44 African Union (AU) countries and became legally binding in 2002.

However, many of the original signatories have since failed to open up their markets. This led to a new push to implement YD, known as SAATM, which was launched in January 2018.

To date, 28 countries have signed up to SAATM, which is being implemented by the African Civil Aviation Commission (AFCAC).

The next step after committing to SAATM is the MOI, which was signed by Nigeria and Burkina Faso during the recent SAATM transport ministers meeting, held on March 29 in Cape Verde.

Once a state signs the MOI, it is uploaded to the AFCAC website, notifying other states their market is open. “This removes all restrictions in their BASAs and makes it binding to implement SAATM,” an AFCAC spokesperson told ATW.

Based on earlier figures provided by AFCAC Secretary General, Tefera Mekonnen, this should mean that 18 of the 28 SAATM members have now signed the MOI.

During the Cape Verde meeting, Niger and Sierra Leone also reviewed their bilateral agreements to make them YD-compliant and AFCAC produced a “state-specific rating matrix,” on the status of SAATM implementation.

“Based on the information received from States on the concrete (implementation) measures, 15 of the 28 SAATM states are above 80 per cent implementation,” the AFCAC spokesman said.

Average implementation across all 28 SAATM states stands at 60 per cent.

During the second week of April, the outcomes from Cape Verde were taken to a wider meeting in Cairo, attended by transport ministers from all 55 AU member states. At this second meeting, the action plan for SAATM implementation was reviewed and updated.

In July, AFCAC secretary general Tefera Mekonnen will present a status report to the African Union (AU) executive committee, made up of foreign-affairs ministers. The president of Togo – who is championing SAATM – will then present these findings to the AU heads of state summit.

The target is to have 40 SAATM members by 2020. The AFCAC spokesperson said Equatorial Guinea will soon announce plans to formally join SAATM, taking the total to 29.

Following last January meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF), it was uncovered that aviation alone has the potential of fostering economic growth in Africa.

Statistics revealed by the International Air Transport Association (IATA), shows that Africa is en-route to witnessing growth in its Aviation sector in the next 20 years with an annual expansion of nearly five per cent.

Presently, Africa can boast of 731 airports and 419 airlines and the sector provides some 6.9 million jobs and $80 billion in economic activity.

Even though it looks promising, pundits have argued that there are still many obstacles retarding the growth of Africa’s Aviation sector. Weak and inadequate air infrastructure, soaring ticket prices, poor connectivity, lack of liberalisation, private investment (management) discouraged and limited accommodation represent the upheavals faced by the aviation sector.

However, adopting a Single Air Transport Market would be a milestone, as this will promote connectivity, increase the number of travellers and even boost tourism, a major economic activity, among others.

Notwithstanding, some airline have made enormous strides. Ethiopian Airline is one of the fastest growth airline in the world. It witnessed 18 per cent increase in passenger numbers last year, boosting profits to $265 million.

RwandaAir lately launched its first flights between London and Kigali.

Kenyan Airways is also on the move. As projected by the IATA, if just 12 key African countries open their skies, opened their markets and increased connectivity, additional 155,000 jobs and $1.3 billion in annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP) would be created in those countries.