Icao meeting calls for financial assistance for poorer countries

Wealthy nations who profit from air cargo service to poor countries may have to financially assist the latter to maintain air infrastructure, delegates at the International Civil Aviation Organisation (Icao) conference in Swaziland last week told FTW. “We must strengthen our air navigation infrastructure and ensure that deficiencies identified are addressed and resolved in the shortest time either as individual states or collectively as subregions,” said Geoffrey Moshabeshi, Icao regional director for East and Southern Africa. Delegates told FTW this essentially meant financial assistance for poor nations. “If a relatively rich country benefits from air cargo service to a poorer country – for instance, South African companies supplying that country and getting goods out – it is in South Africa’s interest to help with the air infrastructure. It’s all about expanding markets and servicing them,” said the head of one government’s aviation department. This view was not unanimous. Some delegates told FTW that the burden of building and maintaining airports and navigational systems belonged to national governments, though the idea of pooled governmental resources at a regional level was mooted at the conference. A poignant reminder of the constraints poor nations face financing air infrastructure came with a visit to the site of Swaziland’s new airport. The host country arranged for the Icao meet to show off the airport, which was to have been operating long ago, as well as a new Civil Aviation Authority formed this year and tasked with overseeing the facility. Delegates took off a half day for a “field trip” to the unfinished airport, where construction was halted last month in the wake of Swaziland’s worsening government financial crisis.