As global air travel positions to outperform 2019 levels, there is a surge in initiatives across Africa’s aviation industry to improve domestic and international air connectivity and increase air traffic within Africa and between Africa and neighbouring regions.
The trends emerging in pursuit of this focus, while being implemented on a state-by-state basis, reveal a strong correlation between Africa’s air travel recovery and growth, and tourism in and out of the continent.
These trends can be classified under three main areas:
- African states respond to international tourism demand with initiatives to improve tourism channels.
- Increasing Foreign-Direct Investments (FDI) and Public-Private-Partnerships (PPP) in Africa’s aviation sector.
- African airlines restructure to adopt operating models better suited to their regions traffic.
The airspaces of African countries have often been modelled with little consideration to neighbouring regions and their traffic patterns. The outcome has been a fragmented airspace with policies that limit the free movement of air travel passengers from country to country.
Despite these limitations, tourism has, for a significant part of three decades, played a key role in driving air traffic to, from and within Africa.
Tourism and aviation in Africa – two sides of the same coin
Tourism, according to the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), is a social, cultural, and economic phenomenon that involves people traveling to countries or places outside of their usual environment for personal or business reasons. These people are known as visitors (tourists or excursionists; residents or non-residents), and tourism refers to their activities, some of which involve tourism expenditure.
In 2021, a United Nations Conference on Trade and Development report estimated that losses to Africa’s tourism sectors because of the Covid-19 pandemic were between US$170 billion and US$253 billion. Projections further revealed that travel to Africa would return to pre-pandemic levels between 2023 and 2024.
However, as of early 2022, international tourist arrivals in Africa have more than doubled compared to 2021. Data from the UNWTO World Tourism Barometer shows that between January 2022 and July 2022, Africa recorded 171% growth in international tourist arrivals compared to the same period in 2021.
International tourist arrivals in Africa are comprised of two passenger categories:
- Passengers travelling to an African country originating from a country outside Africa.
- Passengers travelling to an African country from an African country that is not their origin destination.
Today, international tourist arrival levels in Africa are at about 60% of 2019 levels (more than 30 million international tourist arrivals).
The impact of international tourist arrivals is further highlighted when measuring the recovery of Africa’s air connectivity with neighbouring regions outside Africa.
From the perspective of a passenger, air connectivity refers to the ability to seamlessly travel by air from point A to point B in the shortest amount of time; from the perspective of cargo operators, it refers to the most efficient routes to deliver freight quickly and efficiently from point A to point B; and from the perspective of airports, it is helpful in determining the worth of individual air connections.
In May 2022, International Air Transport Association (IATA) revealed that air connectivity between Africa and the Middle East (106%), and Africa and North America (102%) had exceeded May 2019 levels, while Africa’s air connectivity with Europe in May 2022 stood at 96% of May 2019 levels.
Africa’s air connectivity with regions outside the continent outpaced domestic air connectivity within African countries, which stood at 99% of May 2019 levels, and even more so for air connectivity between African countries which lagged at 77% of May 2019 levels.
Despite this regional connectivity lag, activity across Africa’s aviation industry is shifting towards tourism development and the realization of the services and infrastructure required to meet this demand. The sector’s approach to tourism is mapping out the capacities, strategies and infrastructure being deployed across the continent which will influence Africa’s aviation industry over the next two decades.
But how is the African continent responding and where does tourism and its development fit in?
Where does Africa’s tourism traffic come from and where does it go in Africa?
The passenger traffic arising from tourism in Africa plays a crucial part in mapping Africa’s air travel patterns. Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, the air transport trend in Africa showed consistent growth in the number of passengers carried within and across African countries per year.
Between 2000 and 2019, data suggests that the number of passengers carried through air transport services in Sub-Saharan Africa grew from about 18 million passengers to more than 66 million passengers, nearly quadrupling in the space of two decades.
Similarly, data sourced from the World Tourism Organization highlights a near identical pattern revealing that the number of international arrivals to Sub-Saharan Africa grew from about 14 million in 1995 to over 56 million in 2019.
The final destination of international tourist arrivals in Africa can be categorized into two main subgroups. Tourists arriving to Northern Africa (Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia, Western Sahara), and tourists arriving to sub-Saharan Africa (African countries below Northern Africa).
In Northern Africa, estimates show that two out of 10 international tourists originate from within Africa, while in Sub-Saharan Africa two out of three international tourists originate from within Africa. A UNCTAD study shows that between 2010–2013, about four out of 10 international tourists who traveled to Africa originated from within Africa.
Vice versa, eight out of 10 international tourists in Northern Africa, one out of three international tourists in sub-Saharan Africa, and six out of 10 international tourist arrivals to Africa as a whole originate from outside Africa.
In 2016, 27 million out of 58 million arrivals to African destinations originated from source markets within the region (neighboring African countries).
By 2030, the UNWTO estimates that the number of annual tourist arrivals to Africa will grow to about 134 million.
Read Full Article on Aerotime Hub
