If Nigeria embraces the Yamoussoukro Decision (YD), which is open sky for Africa that allows unrestricted flight operations within African airspace, the country would earn additional $128 million from its operations in West and Central Africa sub-regions, while Africa would earn $1.3 billion.
Full implementation of Yamoussoukro Decision would also boost Africa’s air travellers from the current 119 million to 280 million in 2034.
This was made known at the Aviation Day of the just concluded Akwaaba Air Travel Market in Lagos on Tuesday where the International Air Transport Association (IATA) Regional Head, External Relations, Africa and Middle East, Funke Adeyemi, noted that there is urgent need for improved connectivity, which is fundamental to meet with the growing demands of economic activities in the continent.
Adeyemi stressed that Africa is missing out in the air transport market because it lacks connectivity, which would bring about productivity and economic growth and challenged African countries to take a bold step at fully implementing the YD, adding that the continent was losing its traffic massively to European carriers by not cooperating and working together.
“To fly in Africa is about 50 per cent higher than any other region in the world as a result of high cost of operations in the environment, high taxations and infrastructural deficiencies, amongst others, thereby affecting productivity and profitability,” Adeyemi said.
She noted that Nigeria is the best served market in Africa yet lacks connectivity to the rest of the world but with liberalization, new routes would be opened, shorter travel time would be experienced, tourism and trade would increase and consequently lower fares, ultimately leading to economic growth and enhanced development.
While highlighting the impacts of connectivity in the Nigerian economy, she explained that there would be an increase of 4,200 jobs in the aviation sector and an overall impact of $128.2Million of incremental GDP and 17,400 additional jobs.
She said Africa as a whole can earn about $1.3 billion additional intercontinental GDP from the sector when full liberalisation takes effect, adding that it could even create millions of jobs apart from generating additional five million passengers.
As for overall impact on Nigeria, Adeyemi said over 17, 500 more jobs would be created, advising that ‘creative partnership among the airlines can support liberalisation’.
She added that apart from ‘opening of new routes, the policy would lead to low fares leading to air traffic growth and increased trade.
“African traffic is carried by European carriers, if nothing is done about it, there may not be Africa aviation soon. Bottlenecks such as visa rules and restrictions should also be addressed urgently in order to get things working; the airlines need to be ready too, there should also be good infrastructure to support the initiative”, she said.
Speaking at the occasion, the Deputy Managing Director of Arik Air, Captain Ado Sanusi, called for the need for government to focus on the infrastructural decay in the Nigerian airports and create a viable environment for domestic airlines to operate.
“Our greatest challenge in aviation industry in Nigeria is lack of consistency in the policy of aviation. Once this is sorted out, other challenges will be taken care of,” he added.
Sanusi also spoke on the issue of national carrier and Bilateral Air Service Agreement (BASA) and said the problem of aviation in Nigeria is not really the presence or absence of national carrier but that of necessary infrastructure and conducive operating environment.
He remarked that government can encourage the flag carriers to carry out the functions of Bilateral Air Services Agreement for it, adding that such airlines when empowered and encouraged, would be able to compete with foreign counterparts.
“We have just been classified as country with poor airports’ terminals, how can such a country put together a national carrier? We should first address the infrastructural decay of airport facilities and airspace and create a conducive environment for local carriers to compete favourably and why don’t we do something different from the national carrier?” he asked.
He said that BASA could be done by flag carriers, noting that maybe five or seven airlines could be encouraged to participate in BASA and be allowed to operate open skies”, he added.
Sanusi, who expressed support for YD, said a decision is good but ‘it has to be open fair skies’, to create a level playing field.
He added however that the reason for high debt profile of airlines in Nigeria was due to their mortgage, explaining that bigger airlines do owe their service providers, noting that debt in airline business is a continuum because it is a daily activity where airlines and supplying continuously transact business.
“Debt is not a sin and should not be painted as bad the way it is being painted in Nigeria. Big businesses owe debts to banks and even the banks encourage debts by big organisations that are regularly serviced.”
