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By Chinelo Obogo
Aviation experts rose from a virtual conference on Wednesday with a unanimous verdict that Africa’s aviation is choked by high taxes, fragmented markets, poor coordination and other challenges.
They spoke at the April edition AFRAA SkyConnect Leadership Dialogues, where they insisted that the aforelisted issues must be addressed before the industry finds its right footing.
In the dialogue monitored by Daily Sun, industry experts painted a stark contrast between Africa’s vast aviation potential and its harsh operating reality. They noted that while the continent boasts the population and demand to rank among the world’s leading air travel markets, its airlines remain weighed down by chronic underfunding, heavy taxation, weak connectivity and a lack of collaboration, as they often compete against one another rather than working in concert.
Offering insight into both the challenges and the path forward, Director at Knighthood Global, Manish Raniga, alongside Associate Partner at Lufthansa Consulting, Vincent Huette, dissected what is holding African aviation back and outlined practical steps to unlock its growth.
The conversation opened with a question on whether the continent’s airlines are built to make money or to serve a national purpose to which Raniga explained why African airlines are different from their counterparts around the world.
He said: “Aviation in Africa is about nation building. It is about really growing prosperity and economic growth, regardless of whatever carrier it is across whatever nation across Africa. “This stands in contrast to aviation markets in Europe, North America and Asia, where airlines are fundamentally commercial enterprises, measured by their returns to investors and their ability to compete in open markets.
“In Africa, governments have traditionally viewed their national carriers as strategic assets, tools of connectivity and symbols of sovereignty rather than businesses that need to turn a profit,” he said.
Huette concurred, but noted that Lufthansa Consulting is inundated each year with proposals from African governments seeking to establish national carriers. The outcome, he said, is a fragmented landscape of numerous small, high-cost airlines that struggle to compete effectively on the global stage.
“If every nation wants to set up its own airline in Africa and they are so badly financially funded, then they remain very small, they have low scalability and of course, this results in high costs, which then leads to lower demand,” Huette said.
Mixed fleet
On the challenge of fleet composition, both speakers warned that many African airlines operate a patchwork of aircraft types in very small numbers, a costly strategy.
Each aircraft model demands dedicated pilot training, specialised maintenance expertise, and its own inventory of spare parts, significantly driving up operating costs. While large global carriers can absorb the complexity of mixed fleets due to scale, they noted that smaller African airlines, often running just a handful of different aircraft, face a far heavier financial burden.
Raniga, however, stressed that a single-type fleet is not inherently superior. What ultimately matters, he said, is whether the fleet aligns with the airline’s route network and whether that network can generate sufficient revenue per seat to sustain the business.
Protectionism
The dialogue also tackled one of African aviation’s most persistent problems, which is the tendency of countries to protect their national carriers from competition by restricting market access to foreign airlines.
The African Union’s Single African Air Transport Market, known as SAATM, which aims to open up African skies to all African carriers, was discussed and Huette warned that opening markets too quickly without giving airlines time to restructure and prepare for competition, would wipe out the weaker carriers and leave certain routes worse served than before.
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“You have to give airlines a clear deadline, say, five years to restructure and then they are ready for competition. But if you just open the markets now and have not given airlines time to prepare, they will fear and they will lose,” he said.
Raniga on his part, said the European market went through a period of competition, winners and losers, consolidation, and eventually arrived at an ecosystem in which carriers coexist. He said Africa would have to go through that process, adding that open skies alone would not be enough.
Traffic growth
Despite optimism about Africa’s potential in terms of traffic, the dialogue said the projected traffic growth has failed to fully materialise and Huette explained why. He said high visa barriers, expensive tickets caused by multiple taxes and charges, limited connectivity, and inadequate infrastructure have suppressed demand for flights.
He said it is easier for a European to obtain a visa to visit an African country than it is for an African citizen to obtain a visa to visit a neighbouring African country and that until this changes, the demand for travel will remain low.
Raniga compared Africa with South Asia particularly India, where a combination of liberalisation, private investment, and the emergence of low-cost carriers created brought about growth and transformed what had hitherto been a market for the wealthy into an industry for the low wage earners. “If policies were to be liberalised, open skies, free cross-border travel and sovereign carriers repurposed to be drivers of economic growth while low-cost and private carriers focus on commercial viability, they each have a role to play in the ecosystem to accelerate that growth over the next 10 to 20 years,” he said.
Overtaxation
The burden of taxes, charges, and fees that governments place on air travel in Africa was discussed and the research cited during the session found that the average regional or intercontinental ticket sold in Africa carries approximately $56 in taxes alone and this figure goes above $100 when all charges are included. The speakers said that for travellers in countries where average income is low, this level of taxation is a hindrance to flying.
Raniga described the current approach as “penny wise, pound foolish” and said that governments collecting guaranteed short-term revenue from airlines are foregoing far greater economic returns that would come from a larger, more active aviation market.
“By actually liberalising some of those fees and charges and enabling a cheaper pathway for people to travel, it actually provides far greater economic output than the taxes that would otherwise have been collected,” he said.
Huette agreed, noting that the impact of aviation in the economy goes far beyond the airline sector itself. He said tourism, hospitality, trade, and a range of other industries all benefit when more people are flying and that governments that focus on what they can extract from the aviation sector are missing the larger picture.
Collaboration
The dialogue also addressed the issue of why African airlines hardly collaborate and what it would take to change that. Both speakers agreed that the benefits of collaboration in aviation which are shared maintenance facilities, joint crew training programmes, coordinated IT systems would reduce costs significantly for airlines that individually cannot afford the infrastructure required to compete effectively.
They said that announcements of collaboration between African airlines are far more common than actual implementation and those partnerships are announced and then quietly abandoned. Huette suggested starting with what he called “back office” functions which include training, IT, and maintenance, rather than commercial coordination, which he said was more politically sensitive. He said building trust through operational cooperation is the first step before tackling the more difficult issues of coordinating routes and sharing revenue.
“If you start collaborating on training, on IT, on maintenance, something that does not directly affect the window to the world and build trust there, then you can start looking at the commercial side,” he said.
Raniga said that in the UAE, the two major carriers which are seen as fierce competitors actually collaborate extensively on operational matters, from aircraft maintenance to crew training, even as they compete intensely for passengers.
“Each of these African airlines does not have the balance sheet, the means, or the capabilities to have their own entire infrastructure. Sharing of infrastructure and enabling one to have access to services while the other lowers their costs by leveraging infrastructure, that makes a hell of a lot of sense,” he said.
