As Africa’s national carriers expand their networks and move deeper into digital distribution, travel agents remain embedded in the business of selling air travel, with airlines increasingly using technology to bring the two sides closer together.
Ethiopian Airlines offers a telling example.
The Ethiopian flag carrier reported $9.1 billion in revenue for the 2025/26 financial year, a 20% increase, after carrying 20.7 million passengers, according to Reuters. The airline also added nine aircraft during the year as it continued expanding its network and connectivity through Addis Ababa.
Behind that growth is a distribution system that extends well beyond the airline’s own website and ticket offices.
Ethiopian’s agency programme currently covers more than 700 IATA, non-IATA and NDC agencies across more than 60 countries, with the airline offering agencies access to its content, booking capabilities and commercial support.
Its NDC strategy is particularly significant. Rather than removing travel agents from the distribution chain, Ethiopian is connecting them to its newer retailing infrastructure, allowing travel sellers to access airline content, products and services through modern technology.
The result is a travel market in which the question is no longer simply whether passengers book directly with airlines or through agents. Increasingly, both channels are being connected to the same airline inventory and retailing systems.
The money moving through agencies
Kenya provides a useful measure of the scale of the travel-agent channel.
Travel agencies accredited through IATA’s Billing and Settlement Plan processed more than Sh74 billion in airline ticket sales in Kenya in 2025, illustrating the volume of air travel business moving through the agency distribution system.
The figure is not airline revenue and does not represent sales for a single carrier. It does, however, put the agency channel’s scale into perspective in one of Africa’s most important aviation markets.
Globally, IATA’s BSP handles more than $240 billion in annual settlements, connecting hundreds of airlines with tens of thousands of accredited travel agencies.
For airlines operating across multiple markets, that infrastructure provides access to a distribution network that extends well beyond their own digital platforms.
KQ is building the same bridge
Kenya Airways is following a similar path as it modernises its relationship with the travel trade.
The national carrier has been recognising travel agencies using measures including revenue contribution, market share and year-on-year growth, providing a direct indication of how airline management evaluates agency performance.
At the same time, KQ has been expanding access to its NDC content.
Its NDC trade platform enables agencies to search, price and book Kenya Airways products while providing access to additional services through a more modern distribution environment.
The airline has also expanded NDC access beyond traditional IATA-accredited agencies, allowing more travel sellers to connect to its content through technology partners.
The shift is important because NDC is often described as an airline-versus-agent story.
In practice, the technology is increasingly becoming an airline-and-agent story.
From ticket sellers to digital distribution partners
The traditional travel-agent relationship was relatively straightforward: an airline supplied the seat, while the agent marketed and sold it to the customer.
Modern airline retailing is considerably more complex.
Airlines want greater control over how fares, branded products, baggage, seats, upgrades and other ancillary services are presented and sold. Travel agencies, meanwhile, want access to that content without losing the ability to compare options, serve customers and manage complex itineraries.
NDC provides a technological bridge between the two.
For airlines such as Ethiopian and Kenya Airways, it creates a way to distribute richer content through travel sellers while retaining greater control over their products.
For agencies, it provides access to airline content that increasingly goes beyond the basic fare-and-seat transaction.
That is particularly relevant in Africa, where travel can involve multiple airlines, cross-border connections, corporate travel, group movements and complex itineraries.
The national-carrier network effect
The importance of the relationship becomes clearer when viewed against the expansion of African aviation.
Ethiopian’s 20.7 million passengers demonstrate the scale that can be generated when a national carrier develops a large hub-and-spoke network.
Kenya Airways, meanwhile, provides a key East African network linking Nairobi with regional and international destinations.
For both airlines, the value of a route does not end with passengers who find and purchase a ticket directly from the carrier.
Every additional distribution point expands the number of places where the airline’s network can be discovered, priced and sold.
This is particularly important for destinations where travellers may not know which carrier operates the route, where itineraries involve multiple sectors, or where corporate and group travel requires specialist handling.
The travel agent therefore occupies a different position in the modern airline ecosystem.
It is no longer simply about issuing a ticket.
It is about distribution, market reach, customer access and increasingly, digital retailing.
A relationship being rewritten
Africa’s airline industry is moving towards a distribution model in which direct sales and travel-agent sales can coexist rather than compete for the same space.
Ethiopian’s growing NDC ecosystem, KQ’s expanding trade platform and the billions of shillings flowing through Kenya’s agency settlement system point to the same evolution.
The technology is changing.
The commercial relationship is changing.
But the underlying business remains remarkably familiar: airlines need passengers, passengers need access to airline products, and travel agents remain one of the channels through which that market connects.
