PICTURED:Passengers
wait at Jomo Kenyatta
International airport
in Nairobi →49W
hen Alex Dichter, now a senior partner
at McKinsey & Company in London,
tried to go to war-torn Goma in the
eastern Democratic Republic of Congo
in the late 1990s to do voluntary
work, the first problem was getting in.
There was no functioning government
and no official flights. The only solution at Kigali airport in
neighbouring Rwanda was for Dichter to go over to the cargo
area with a couple of bottles of vodka in his rucksack and use
it to “hitch a ride” with one of the mercenary Russian and
Ukrainian aircraft that were ferrying arms into the DRC.
There are usually more conventional ways to get a flight
within Africa. But it can mean flying out to Europe and then
back into Africa again. Why, for example, is it impossible
to fly direct between Kinshasa in the DRC and Nigeria’s
commercial capital, Lagos? These are already huge cities and
will become megalopolises in the future.
African aviation policymakers understand the potential of
greater competition and increased direct services, but have
multiple and conflicting objectives and constraints, Dichter
notes. They may want to increase aviation services, and also
need to protect domestic aviation jobs, “but they can’t have
both. The desire to protect is politically powerful.” Many
countries suspect that if exposed to real competition, their
own national carrier might struggle to survive.
To state the obvious, Africa is a growth market for aviation.
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) forecasts
5.9 per cent year-on-year growth in African aviation over the
next 20 years, with passenger numbers expected to increase
from 100 million to more than 300 million by 2026. That
suggests the possibility of Africa becoming a less fragmented
continent with greater air connectivity, opening up economic
benefits across the board.
An IATA survey in 2014 suggested that if 12 key African
countries opened their markets and increased connectivity, an
extra 155,000 jobs and US$1.3 billion in annual GDP would
be created in those countries.
Much remains to be done if that potential is to be realised.
“Too many African governments view aviation as a luxury
rather than a necessity,” argues Katherine Kaczynska, IATA’s
corporate communications manager for the Middle East
and Africa. “That perception needs to change. The value of
aviation for governments is not in the tax receipts that can
be squeezed from it. It is in the economic growth and job
creation that aviation supports.”
Kaczynska points out that the global average profit per
passenger is US$7.80. But airlines in Africa on average lose
US$1.55 for every passenger carried. There are many reasons
for the disparity. Jet fuel costs in Africa are 35 per cent higherbusinesstraveller.com MARCH 2019
AVIATION