The International Air Transport Association (IATA) has revealed a collaborative initiative, Focus Africa, which aims to address the major challenges and hindrances for African air freight industries, jobs, and economic growth.
Willie Walsh, the director general of Iata, said: "Africa accounts for 18% of the global population, but just 2.1% of air transport activities (combined cargo and passenger).
“Closing that gap, so that Africa can benefit from the connectivity, jobs and growth that aviation enables, is what Focus Africa is all about."
The initiative aspires to improve aviation’s contribution to African economies, social development, connectivity, safety and reliability for shippers and passengers by encouraging the collaboration of public and private stakeholders to deliver measurable progress in 6 areas that affect customer experience, the airline’s sustainability and credibility.
These areas include high cost, infrastructure constraints, regulatory impediments, lack of connectivity, the slow adoption of global standards and skill shortages.
These have become particularly important considering that between 2020 and 2022, African aviation lost a cumulative $3.5 billion. Furthermore, IATA predicts that this amount will increase to $213 billion in 2023.
By sustainably connecting the continent internally and to global markets by air freight, the initiative aims to create social and economic development opportunities to support the realisation of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) for Africa of lifting 50 million people out of poverty by 2030.
Particularly aviation facilitates trade and tourism; two industries with great potential to create job opportunities, generate prosperity, and reduce poverty across the continent.
African aviation has a solid foundation to support the case for improvement that could contribute to broader development. Before Covid African aviation maintained 7.7 million jobs and earned $63 billion in economic activity on the continent.
Post-Covid predictions are seeing demand potentially tripling over the next two decades.
"Africa stands out as the region with the greatest potential and opportunity for aviation. The Focus Africa initiative renews IATA’s commitment to supporting aviation on the continent.
“As the incoming chair of the Iata Board of Governors, and the first from Africa since 1993, I look forward to ensuring that this initiative gets off to a great start and delivers measurable benefits," Yvonne Makolo, CEO of RwandAir and first female chair of the Iata Board of Governors (2023-2024) told BizCommunity.
"The limiting factors on Africa’s aviation sector are fixable. The growth potential is clear. And the economic boost that a more successful African aviation sector will deliver has been witnessed in many economies already. With Focus Africa, stakeholders are uniting to deliver on six critical focus areas that will make a positive difference. We’ll measure success and will need to hold each other accountable for the results," Walsh said.
The six focus areas are:
- Finance and distribution: Acceleration the implementation of secure, effective and cost-efficient financial services and adoption of modern retailing standards.
- Infrastructure: Facilitate the growth of efficient, secure, and cost-effective aviation infrastructure to improve customer experience and operational efficiency.
- Safety: Improve operational safety through a data-driven, collaborative program to reduce safety incidents and accidents, in the air and on the ground.
- Connectivity: Promote the liberalisation of intra-African market access through the Single African Air Transport Market (SAATM).
- Sustainability: Assist Africa’s air transport industry to achieve the Net Zero by 2050 emissions targets agreed to by industry and the UN’s International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) member states.
- Future Skills: Promote aviation-related career paths and ensure a steady supply of diverse and suitably skilled talent to meet the industry’s future needs.
The partners for the project will be announced and join forces in Addis Ababa on 20-21 June to officially launch the Focus Africa initiative with more details for each task area.
"Partnerships will differentiate the outcome of Focus Africa from previous efforts to stimulate Africa’s development with air transport.
“By partnering, stakeholders will effectively pool their resources, research, expertise, time and funding to support the common goals of the six work areas," Kamil Al Awadhi, Iata regional vice president for Africa and the Middle East said to BizCommunity.
As Africa continues to recovery from the Covid-19 crisis, air cargo is sitting at 31.4% over 2019 levels and air travel is 93% of 2019 levels. Full recovery for air travel is expected in 2024.
"The tasks for Focus Africa are not new. Work is already underway as part of the work of Iata and other stakeholders in Africa. But after the financial trauma that the pandemic brought to African aviation, we are at a unique time of rebuilding. By launching Focus Africa now, we can ensure that the recovery from Covid-19 moves aviation to an even better place than we were in 2019," says Al Awadhi.
