Aviation Africa: Give AFCAC power to create African single skies

This is according to high-level speakers on the aero-political panel at the Aviation Africa Summit, held in Johannesburg on 17 September.

“A new discussion should be, how do we make AFCAC better empowered to be able to even set regulations and have an ability to harmonise those regulations,” stated Poppy Khoza, Director of Civil Aviation, South African Civil Aviation Authority.

Africa should look at the way Europe has organised itself in this field as an example of best practice. “For instance, when you are a member state of the European Union falling within EASA [EU Aviation Safety Agency], it is not just an agency, it is an agency that has teeth. Either you comply or you don't, and if you don't comply, there are consequences,” said Khoza.

“The single major problem that we have is a lack of implementation of programs that we ourselves have developed for the growth and development of the economies of Africa, but led by aviation,” said Captain Gilbert Kibe, Managing Director of Air Transport Consulting, and a former Director General of Kenya’s CAA.

SAATM was officially launched in 2018 with the commitment of 23 states to create a single unified air transport market.

In November 2022, to accelerate the implementation of SAATM, AFCAC launched the SAATM Pilot Implementation Project (PIP), an initiative designed to boost the implementation of SAATM through an approach where clusters of countries come together to move liberalisation measures forward.

Despite this initiative various speakers at Aviation Africa were dissatisfied with the slow pace of SAATM. “I think it’s nascent,” said Rodger Foster, CEO of South African carrier Airlink, in terms of SAATM enabling his business to open more intra-African routes.

“I think it is an opportunity, but we have to do much more,” said Foster.

Many states remain reluctant to expose their national carriers to the competition SAATM may bring. Kibe, who is AFCAC’s SAATM PIP Ambassador for East Africa, said: “My job, together with AFCAC, is to encourage member states to implement SAATM.

“But I have discovered that those member states are not interested in finding out what the features and benefits of SAATM are. They don't even give us an audience,” said Kibe.

“We wonder, why do we not have that? One of the things that they get to hear about is the African airline in our state says that if we implement SAATM my airline will be killed, by Ethiopian [Airlines] for instance, which is not the case.

“Another story is the Minister for Finance hears that you will have to reduce taxes to increase revenue. That does not make sense for a Minister for Finance,” continued Kibe.

“So, people have refused to understand what SAATM is. But what SAATM really is about is to deregulate Africa and make Africa a domestic market for African carriers only, not foreign carriers.,” said Kibe. “African carriers will operate in Africa in a domestic space, meaning that the peoples of Africa should have freedom of movement wherever they want to go without a visa.”

Khoza, who works in a country that is championing SAATM, noted that not all states feel comfortable with the single market idea. “Remember that we are dealing with a continent that that is extremely diverse, one that is fragmented by the historical issues of colonisation, where even the languages that we speak are so diverse and the cultures are so diverse,” Khoza told delegates.

“For us to have this great harmony we need a co-ordination structure that can direct. For Africa to work, we need a stronger AFCAC.

“If we leave things the way that they are, and we don't deal with the structural issues, 30 years down the line we'll come back and talk about the same issues that we're dealing with [today],” believed Khoza.

“But I do think that there is hope, provided we go back to the basics and say what needs to be done differently,” she concluded.