Africa: the nightmare of Civil aviation

It happens to take thirty hours travelling, by air, to reach Monrovia from Cameroon (2080 km)… This could be the motto of accustomed airline travellers in Africa, facing the nightmare of delays, stopovers and other surprises that constrain trade and tourism. “It is not easy to travel in Africa,” admits the airliner Emirati President, Tim Clark. “If you want to go to Accra in Ghana to Douala in Cameroon (900 km), you must go to Paris. “A lot of lost time”, he added.

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) director of communication, Anthony Concil, declared that “the Yamoussoukro agreement was signed twenty years ago in order to open the African skies to competition and liberalisation of air services; but little progress has been made and travelling on the continent is still a challenging experience.
Local companies are hampered by restrictions imposed by the African states which are often owners of companies. The aviation cannot function normally like the other industries because of their intervention», Concil said. Corruption is a crucial problem in many parts of the continent”, he added, and in the absence of government policy, in developing the aviation field as an essential infrastructure, “the continent is paying the price for the lost economic activity and a higher cost of doing business” Mr. Concil voiced. The need for a better organised air tours is a necessity, but the priority remains the safety in a continent considered the most dangerous in the world with a number of aviation accidents fourteen times higher than the global average.

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