It Has Been A Long, Long Journey, But Are African Skies Finally Ready To Open And Will The Continent’s Airlines Finally Be Able To Fly In A Liberalised Environment?

Transcript

Abderahmane Berthe:SAATM is a milestone in African aviation industry. It has been launched in January 2018. The purpose is the full implementation of the Yamoussoukro decision. So that means no traffic rights restriction, no capacity, frequency, and tariff restriction Also, we are now in the phase of its implementation. We still have a long way to go, but we are very optimistic. We have an action plan to enforce the SATAM, the opening of African sky. What we need today is a powerful executive agency. So that to implement the, the SAATM. So far we have 28 states who have committed and signed up to the SAATM. Among those states, 16 countries have signed the Memorandum of Implementation. That means that they are reviewing all their bilateral air service agreements so that they comply with the Yamoussoukro decision. However, I think a lot of hurdles, as you said, because the Single African Air Transport Market alone cannot be implemented if we don't have some actions from the government. One of the challenges of our industry in Africa is the high cost of operation, for example, and the level of trade between African countries. Even if you open the sky, if you don't have enough traffic between one point to another, no airline will operate on this route. And also, we need as airlines to strengthen, enhance our cooperation between our airlines. Because you can see today in Africa on some routes you will have 4 to 5 operators without any sort of agreement between them. You can have, for example, 3 flights from a destination to another destination at the same time, and the rest of the day you have no flight. So we need to enhance this cooperation, and one of the objectives of AFRAA, African Airlines Association, is to assist African airlines so that they can achieve this cooperation, and we are doing it through the Route Network Coordination Committee. The success today is, I can say, about safety. You know, safety is a priority. Without safety, you cannot have a good business, and since 2 or 3 years, The level of safety has improved a lot in Africa, but we need to be very cautious about safety issues because the growth of air traffic in Africa will bring more aircraft, more pilots, and we need to keep the level of safety in Africa. We have some success stories. In Africa, some airlines are really successful and they're strong operating in Africa and globally also, but we need to have more successful African airlines so that we can achieve the objective of African Union, which is the economic integration of the continent.

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