Airports and governments across Africa must work together to ensure the continent can access new markets, ACI World director general Angela Gittens has said.
Latest data from the organisation’s membership shows global passenger traffic grew 7.3 per cent in December 2016 and 5.5 per cent for the year as a whole. All regions except Africa posted growth in passenger volumes for the year, ranging from 2.2 per cent in the recessionary Latin America-Caribbean region to over 9.0 per cent in the buoyant Asia-Pacific and Middle East regions.
Yesterday’s Routes Africa Strategy Summit highlighted some of the most interesting aspects of aviation in Africa today. More than a dozen high-profile speakers debated some of the key topics impacting the aviation business across the region.
An open skies arrangement is unlikely to be introduced in Africa until governments on the continent see their airlines as businesses, not personal play things. Speaking at the Routes Africa Strategy Summit in Tenerife, Raphael Kuuchi, the vice president of Africa at the International Air Transport Association (IATA) said the failure of countries to accept the need for liberalisation was endemic across the continent.
African airlines are too small to survive alone and need to work together more if they are to continue doing business in an increasingly global world. In fact it was suggested that unless a small airline could evolve, grow, and develop partnerships with others, it would simply fail.
