While Africa often appears at the top of travelers' bucket lists because of its vast game reserves, eye-popping geological features and scenic, wide-open spaces, the continent has also earned a reputation for being difficult to navigate when it comes to cross-border air travel.
As an increasing number of travelers are setting their sights on Africa-the region saw a nine percent bump in tourism last year, the highest increase of any region in the world-international carriers are rapidly increasing access to African hub destinations.
"Eighty percent of the African market is done by non-African carriers," said Wosenyeleh Hunegnaw, director of the Ethiopian Civil Aviation Authority, in an interview with Deutsche Welle.
But once in the continent, getting around can be challenging. Among the core issues is that many of Africa's airports operate on bilateral agreements. Someone hoping to fly from Niger to neighboring Mail, for example, might find themselves having to make numerous stops in order to connect the dots that make up the bilateral agreements.
But that might slowly be changing.
Last week at the African Union Summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 23 nations signed an accord that more or less translates to an "open skies" agreement.
Essentially, all flagged carriers of the signatory nations will be allowed free access to any airports located within those nations. The agreement, if it takes root, could serve to alleviate some of the red tape that governs African aviation agreements, which in return could mean reduced costs for African carriers, thereby better allowing them to create hub and spoke-style service throughout the region.
The signed aviation agreement is one of several tentpole issues of Agenda 2063, a "strategic framework for the socio-economic transformation of the continent over the next 50 years. It builds on and seeks to accelerate the implementation of past and existing continental initiatives for growth and sustainable development."
The issues in Agenda 2063 are far-reaching and also include a continent-wide free trade agreement as well as developing a single passport to cover every African nation. While a universal passport may still be more dream than reality, more nations are starting to adopt visa-free travel policies. In December, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta announced Kenya will grant visas on arrival to all Africans, making it the third country in Africa behind Benin and Rwanda, to do so.
While Africa looks forward to easier inter-continental access, at least one African carrier is seeing big growth throughout the region.
In January, Ethiopian Airlines announced it is looking to establish hub airports at several strategic African locations.
"With a very large landmass and around one billion population, Africa has a high growth opportunity," said Tewelde Gebremariam, CEO of Ethiopian Airlines Group at a January press event "By expanding the hubs, we will be contributing significantly to intra-Africa connectivity."
Ethiopian, which is in the midst of its own strategic plan-Vision 2025-has registered an average growth of 25 percent over the past seven years. Business is so good that last year the airline ordered an additional 10 Airbus A350-900 aircraft, on top of its initial order for 12 of the same aircraft. In 2016, Ethiopian became the first African carrier to operate the A350.
"We will deploy the additional aircraft on our long-haul routes connecting Addis Ababa with destinations in Africa, Europe, the Middle East and Asia," said Gebremariam. The aircraft are being configured to accommodate 343 passengers.
The airline is also working to build a regionwide effort among all African carriers, while also helping resuscitate carriers throughout Africa. Ethiopian recently bought a 45 percent stake in Zambia Airways, which declared bankruptcy back in 1994 and it is also working with Ghana in hopes of reviving that nation's flag carrier. Ethiopian also operates Malawian Airlines in Malawi and ASKY Airlines in Togo.
In an interview with Quartz Africa, Michael Otieno, an aviation expert in Nairobi says that expansion throughout the region is "a given." Success, however, will rely on Ethiopian working with all carriers to get them to "throw their back into the whole effort to get the continent connected."
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