The way forward for aviation in Africa, by AFRAA scribe, Folly-Kossi - The Vanguard

Christian Folly-Kossi is Secretary-General of African Airlines Association, and scribe of the continental body, he has never hidden his disdain for what he calls foreign airlines’ exploitation of African aviation. 

He had also, at different fora, challenged African leaders to display sufficient political will to decimate all obstacles in the way of African aviation in its march to growth and progress.  Folly-Kossi is not happy that African contributes less than 5% of revenue generated by the global aviation industry.
 
For him, the way out of the quagmire is for African leaders to urgently liberalise the aviation sector through implementation of the Yamoussoukro Decision, which sets out to open up African aviation sector to African airlines, in such a manner that all parts of the continent would be connected by air.
In this paper presented at a recent aviation forum in Accra, Ghana, Folly-Kossi spoke on these and sundry issues in the sector.

Since Africa has strongly resumed with little success, its debate on the way forward in order to build up its political union, it is our duty as business stakeholders to recall that there would be no meaningful political unions or useful continental government unless the continent first lays down economic foundations and pave the way for economic integration, inter-regional and intra-African trade and tourism.The European Union started with a three-country common market for coal and steel.

Shouldn’t Africa consider today, using the same model to build on powerful economic pillars such as integrated networks of telecommunications (telephony and ICT), energy and power, transport by road, railway and more importantly air, which has proved to be the easiest and fastest mode of transport to put in place. 

The vision and analysis require that we fully assess the air transport situation across the continent and remedy any of its weaknesses as a matter of priority.

Following their independence, most African countries developed in the 1960s airlines that carried high the flags of their nascent countries endowing them with practical transport instruments to develop trade with the rest of the world, promote tourism and provide jobs to their youth.

Those days were marked by the emergence of powerful airlines of reference that have either disappeared in the last decade or are currently on their deathbed.  They include Air Afrique, Nigeria Airways, Ghana Airways, Air Gabon, Zambia Airways, Cameroon Airlines and Air Tanzania, among others.
Since their demise, the sky in most African countries has been dominated by the mega carriers of the world.  In the Central and West Africa in particular, international routes are almost exclusively operated by European carriers.

As a result, the regional airlines have been unable to grow and develop substantively to offer services on the international as well as the intra-African routes.

Gone are the days when Ghana Airways, the first African airline in history to land an aircraft manned by an indigenous black African at Gatwick Airport, operated daily flights along the West Coast from Lagos to Dakar, putting an air bridge between all the West African coastal countries such as Togo and Cote d’Avoire has become a serious headache.  A trip from Niamey to N’Djamena can easily take a full week although these countries share border.

Despite the tremendous efforts made by some of our leading airlines to connect African to Africa, it is still quicker and more convenient to transit via Europe to many parts of the African continent.  The economic implications are that business and trade cannot be developed on a large scale between African countries.

An important event such as the African Cup of Nations that Ghana will soon host, could gather much more football fans from the region and indeed the whole of Africa, if air accessibility was readily available and affordable.

The absence of such vital flight connections to Ghana from many parts of Africa could result in the country missing a precious opportunity to reap the huge inflow usually generated by such events.
On the labour front, African air transport industry barely provides 500,000 jobs against 29 million worldwide.

These statistics clearly show how much we are failing to get our due share of the wealth of African air transport.  It is high time we took stock of this situation and resolve to address it.  Airlines invested a lot of hope in the NEPAD in this respect, but NEPAD has overlooked airlines’ needs.  Instead, its over-concentrated attention on the number one priority, which is the restructuring and revitalisation of the airline industry.

Prof. Alpha Omar Konare and the African Union Commission had the vision and followed it up with the right step in organising a high level meeting of the CEOs of African Airlines in association with ADB and AFRAA.  The objective of the meeting was to convey to the CEOs the expectations of African nations with regards to air transport, and listen to their concerns and growth plans in response to the market dynamics.

As a follow-up, we have been invited by the AU to attend a new meeting on African air transport “Master Plan”.  It is our hope that all the industry dire needs will be taken on board and the proceeding of the meeting presented to the ministers and to the Heads of State and Government for practical actions.  Steps should be taken to fully implement the Yamousoukro Decision without further delay.