Tuesday, July 2, 2024 The International Air Transport Association (IATA) urged African governments to harness the growing aviation sector to enhance economic and social development across the continent. IATA recently forecasted that African airlines are poised to achieve a collective net profit in 2024 for the second consecutive year. This milestone underscores the sector’s resilience during its post-COVID recovery.
Despite this positive outlook, the projected $100 million profit equates to only 90 cents per passenger, significantly lower than the global average of $6.14. “Africa’s airlines are making a collective profit.
That is good news. But it is razor-thin and well below the global benchmark. And there are wide variations across the continent where many individual airlines still struggle with losses.
The demand to travel is there. To meet it, the African airline sector needs to overcome many challenges, not least of which are infrastructure deficiencies, high costs, onerous taxation, and the failure to broadly implement a continent-wide multilateral traffic rights regime,” said Kamil Alawadhi , IATA’s Regional Vice President for Africa and the Middle East. “The challenges facing African aviation are significant, but they are not insurmountable.
IATA’s Focus Africa initiative is by no means a panacea, but it does lay out a framework to build a stronger aviation sector that will provide even better support to economic growth and social development. The prize .
