Grounded by Paper: How Bilateral Agreements Keep Africa Apart
Ninette Mwarania, Manager, Policy and Research, Competition Authority of Kenya; with comments by Appiah Kusi Adomako, Esq, Director, West Africa Regional Centre, CUTS International, Accra
I have been to Banjul, The Gambia, twice. The first time I flew Ethiopian Airlines, and it took me twenty hours from Nairobi to Banjul, including an eight-hour layover in Addis. The second time it took me close to eleven hours, by ASKY Airlines, a Togo based operator that partners with Ethiopian Airlines. In this flight, I sat with passengers who had boarded in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, a country in West Africa. It took them six hours to travel within West Africa to Banjul. Passengers using Ethiopian Airlines and connecting to Banjul at Accra through ASKY Airlines, travelled thirteen hours. In Africa!
So let us do the arithmetic. The distance from Nairobi to Banjul is roughly 6,126 kilometers, while Nairobi to London is roughly 6,841 kilometers. London is further away than Banjul, yet the London flight is a single overnight hop of about eight and a half hours, unlike Banjul, which requires more travel time. Ouagadougou to Banjul is about 1,645 kilometers, which a direct flight would cover in under two and a half hours. This clearly indicates a problem with the route map.
Out of Nairobi, Kenya Airways flies direct to a handful of West African cities, including Accra, Lagos and Dakar, while ASKY flies to Lomé, Togo, meaning that a traveler must connect to Banjul through either of those cities, as I did through Addis and Lome. Conversely, while the Nairobi – London route is longer, there are several carriers competing for consumers. Various studies underpin the importance of efficient air connectivity.
The 2021 African Competition Forum (ACF) cross-country study on airlines notes that Africa is home to about 15% of the world's population but accounts for less than 3% of global air traffic. The study, covering South Africa, Kenya, Zambia, Nigeria, Angola, Mauritius, The Gambia and COMESA, notes that bilateral arrangements limit which airlines may compete on a route, as well as the frequency and type of service. This is because African route rights are still largely allocated through bilateral air service agreements negotiated by individual countries, governing whether a carrier may exercise fifth freedom rights. The same study identifies ongoing state support for national carriers, dominant flag carriers and alliance and code-share arrangements, practices that increase barriers to entry by new carriers. The study further found African regional routes frequently carrying a higher price per passenger kilometer than longer intercontinental sectors. These costs affect consumer welfare through time lost, hotel nights, visa exposure in transit states and missed connections.
Cristea, Abate and Benitez (2022), in the World Bank Policy Research Working Paper "Toward a Competitive Air Transport Market in Africa: The Role of Bilateral Air Service Agreements Liberalization", observed a panel of 71 African country pairs between 2011–2019 and found that both partial and full liberalization of bilateral agreements lower airfares and raise passenger demand and flight frequency, generating consumer benefits equivalent to a 40–42% drop in airfares. Separately, Tolcha (2024) measured airport-level concentration with the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index across 54 countries, 339 airports and 221 airline groups between 2015 and 2019. The study finds a fragmented market populated by many small airlines, with strong competition at large hubs and tourist gateways and concentration where a protected flag carrier operates.
The protected flag carrier is a legacy of the post-independence period, when many African governments established national airlines as symbols of sovereignty and instruments of economic development. Commercial performance often suffered from political interference, weak management, excessive debt and inadequate capital. Numerous carriers subsequently collapsed, among them Ghana Airways and Nigeria Airways, or became dependent on repeated public support. The World Bank traces Africa’s restrictive aviation arrangements partly to governments’ efforts to protect these national airlines from competition. This history matters because protecting an airline often comes at the expense of passengers through higher fares and fewer travel options.
The Yamoussoukro Decision was adopted in 1999 and became fully binding in 2002, committing African states to multiple designation of carriers, deregulation of frequency, capacity and tariffs, and the removal of restrictions on traffic rights, including the fifth freedom. Subsequently, the Single African Air Transport Market (SAATM), launched in 2018, is its operational vehicle, with 38 states signing the Solemn Commitment and 26 signing Memoranda of Implementation. This SAATM initiative has resulted in 124 new intra-African routes, including 22 fifth freedom routes, according to AFCAC's latest milestones report, presented in June 2026 (Dean, 2026). Fifth freedom traffic has risen from 14.5% in 2018 to 23% in 2025 and is on track to reach 30% by 2028. However, the challenge is the lack of domestication of the Yamoussoukro principles into national law, because of the 38 signatories, only 12 have completed regulatory alignment and operational open access, 16 are partially implemented and 10 have signed without demonstrable operational change (Dean, 2026). AFCAC has called on governments to complete this domestication by the end of 2026 (Aviation Week, 2025). Free movement of goods, services and people is the core promise of the AfCFTA, and so is regional integration, with full SAATM implementation expected to generate about 96,000 aviation jobs and an additional 15.9 million passengers.
Further, the 2022 Economic Commission for Africa report titled "Implications of the African Continental Free Trade Area for Demand for Transport Infrastructure and Services" estimates that implementing the AfCFTA would double air freight from 2.3 to 4.5 million tonnes by 2030 and that transport would absorb over a quarter of intra-African gains in services trade. Thus, to build continental value chains, air connectivity is an essential component.
So, to enhance connectivity in Africa, I propose three strategies. First, as transport is already one of the five priority sectors under the AfCFTA Protocol on Trade in Services, air traffic rights under the SAATM should be prioritized. To operationalize this, state parties should be encouraged to domesticate the Yamoussoukro commitments on market access for air transport. In addition, the Protocol on Free Movement should be prioritized, including by waiving visa requirements within Africa to enhance consumer welfare and improve mobility across the continent.
Secondly, the AfCFTA Protocol on Competition Policy, together with the competition rules annexed to the Yamoussoukro Decision, should be operationalized for the aviation sector. This would mean working with AFCAC and national competition authorities on merger review, alliance scrutiny, state aid transparency and fare monitoring on dominant city pairs. It would be supported by publishing, quarterly, the number of operators, frequencies and price per passenger kilometer on the top intra-African city pairs, borrowing from the ACF methodology. In addition, cluster-based fifth freedom corridors that pool traffic rights across ECOWAS should be negotiated.
This also bears on recent efforts to establish or revive national carriers, which reflect a legitimate desire to improve connectivity. Yet a new airline does not automatically create a viable market. Although African air travel demand is growing, traffic on individual routes is often too limited to support several separate operations profitably. Each airline must finance aircraft, maintenance, training, insurance and management, even when passenger volumes are low. Dividing a limited market among numerous small operators risks duplicating costs and weakening financial resilience. The stronger policy direction is to support commercially managed regional airlines serving several countries, with smaller carriers feeding passengers into their networks. Pooling traffic across borders would help spread costs over more passengers, improve aircraft use and support more frequent services.
Regional scale must nevertheless operate alongside effective competition. A large airline sheltered from rivals has little incentive to pass efficiency gains to passengers. Regional integration should therefore support several competing airline groups, open access for efficient new entrants and the merger and alliance scrutiny proposed above. Governments should judge success through affordable fares, reliable services and shorter journeys. Ownership of a national carrier is a poor substitute for these outcomes.
Thirdly, taxes and charges should be reviewed. AFRAA observes that taxes and charges add a heavy burden to African airfares. International departures carry an average of US$68 in passenger taxes, charges and fees, about double the US$32 in Europe and US$34 in the Middle East. Taxes and charges make up over 35% of the average African ticket, and up to about 70% on some intra-African routes. If airlines pass the savings on, a 25% cut in taxes and charges on a 36% tax share would lower the typical fare by roughly 9%, and by more on the highest-tax routes. ECOWAS's Supplementary Act on aviation charges, adopted in December 2024, requires member states from January 2026 to abolish air transport taxes and cut passenger and security charges by 25%.
Beyond these three strategies, governments should also assess airline policy against the interests of the wider economy. Restricting a competing carrier to protect a national airline might preserve revenue for one company while raising costs for tourism, exporters, investors and families. Repeated airline bailouts also compete with spending on airports, safety oversight and other public services. Where an essential route lacks enough commercial demand, governments should consider transparent, competitively awarded service contracts with clear performance requirements. This approach would fund a defined connectivity need and expose the cost to public scrutiny. National aviation policy should maximize the economic benefits of air travel across the country.
References
Abate, M. (2016) 'Economic effects of air transport market liberalization in Africa', Transportation Research Part A, 92, pp. 326–337. (Optional; cite it in the text or drop it.)
African Airlines Association (AFRAA) (2024) Taxes and Charges Study Review 2024. Nairobi: AFRAA.
African Civil Aviation Commission (AFCAC) (2025) SAATM implementation milestones. Aviation Africa Summit, September 2025.
African Competition Forum (ACF) (2021) ACF Cross Country Study on Airlines 2020. Pretoria: Competition Commission of South Africa.
Aviation Week (2025) ‘AFCAC Chief: Time to Finish the Job On African Single Market’. Available at: https://aviationweek.com/air-transport/safety-ops-regulation/afcac-chief-time-finish-job-african-single-market (Accessed: 19 October 2026).
Cristea, A., Abate, M. and Benitez, D.A. (2022) Toward a Competitive Air Transport Market in Africa: The Role of Bilateral Air Service Agreements Liberalization. World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 10204.
Dean, P. (2026) ‘One African Sky, SAATM implementation takes centre stage in Lomé’, African Pilot Magazine, 16 June. Available at: https://africanpilot.africa/one-african-sky-saatm-implementation-takes-centre-stage-in-lome/ (Accessed: 19 October 2026).
ECOWAS (2024) Supplementary Act on the Common Policy on Aviation Charges, Taxes and Fees in ECOWAS Member States. Abuja: ECOWAS Commission.
Tolcha, T.D. (2024) 'Competition in the African air transport market', Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives, 27, 101209.
United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) (2022) Implications of the African Continental Free Trade Area for Demand for Transport Infrastructure and Services. Addis Ababa: UNECA.