Aviation Africa: It’s all about gaining trust in Africa

The UK company combines services across the aviation spectrum, from air charter to ACMI leasing, aircraft transaction and consultancy services.

It has six different offices, in the US, as well as Dubai and Kuala Lumpar. 

“Over the last 24 months, we have had some fairly big contracts with two different African lenders,” said Broud. “One is an import, export bank in Northern Africa, and then we have a local South African bank called Absa as a customer.”

Broud said the company wants to ‘strive’ to help more African airlines to ‘achieve their goals but added it doesn’t come easily.

“I think you have to look at it as two different aspects,” he said. “One is getting the business, and then one is executing the relevant project that you've contracted with your client. In getting the business, a lot of trust is needed, especially in Africa.  It’s important to be face-to-face with your client most of the time, and it's a lot of hand holding and nurturing the relationship up until delivering the work.”

Broud said that when it comes to the transaction side of things, it can get ‘tricky.’

“Africa is a different beast,” he said. “There can be a little bit of resistance, and you know, you have to do things robotically. You really need to guide both sides of the parties during a transaction, because one party might have an abundance of experience while the other is new and acquiring an asset or in a repossession stage - but they might not know how to actually do a repossession. And when it comes to money, I think everybody knows, tempers and frustrations can elevate very quickly. And when that happens in Africa, that can sway the deal very quickly.”

Broad said events such as Aviation Africa are important to maintain relationships with different stakeholders.

“We get a lot of our work for events such as Aviation Africa. Networking is very important, especially in Africa. It's very much about trust,” he said.

“The sessions here have also been very interesting, especially about where the airlines want to go. At the end of the day, everybody wants to see everyone working together, but I do think people need to stop and think.  I think a lot of airlines need to primarily protect the most valuable asset to them, and it’s not their aircraft, it’s their balance sheet. They need to protect their balance sheet first before they can expand and do the things that they need to do.”

Broad said his key message is that aviation companies need to know how to operate in Africa – something he says ACC Aviation do well.

“ACC has been around for 20 years,” he said.  “We've done hundreds of transactions, whether that's through ACMI or actual asset transactions. And we've helped airlines with their business planning and financial projections to achieve where they want to go, and that's mainly been from the European market, but some of them in Africa. We've actually got an African airline that's contracted with us now utilising the business plan that we structured to get started.”

He concluded: “Africa is a big and exciting market, and I think within the next 10 years we'll see some very interesting growth.”