Liberalization of the aviation industry has been advocated to address some hindrances to growth in Africa. The first significant attempt was the adoption of the Yamoussoukro Decision (treaty) in 1999 to allow for open skies among 44 members of the African Union, which became binding in 2002. However, intra-African services still faced restrictive air service agreements, which impacted routing, frequency, capacity and fares. The African Union, in January 2018, therefore signed the Single African Air Transport Market (SAATM) to speed up the full implementation of the Yamoussoukro Decision and advance the liberalization of aviation in Africa to boost the continent’s economic integration.
African Airlines Association (AFRAA) has identified some key challenges in the African Aviation Industry, including the imposition of excessive taxes and charges on the airlines by various governments, poor intra-African connectivity coupled with market access limitations, inflated price of jet fuel, blocked funds, rising number of foreign competitors, unfavorable investment environment, and more recently, COVID-19 pandemic. To provide an evidence-based framework for addressing the challenges, AFRAA commissioned a study to develop economic models/tools for forecasting and estimating impact of ticket price changes on travel demand, impact of taxes and charges on aviation growth, impact of market liberalization on traffic growth and economic growth, growth in passenger demand (traffic), revenues and profits.
