Restrictive bilateral air service agreements, high taxes and visa barriers continue to slow the implementation of the Single African Air Transport Market (SAATM).
During the recent African Business Travel Association’s (ABTA) Nigeria Corporate Travel Webinar on ‘The Missing Links: Africa’s under-serviced air routes and business impact’, Aaron Munetsi, CEO of AASA, and Brian Kitchin, the Divisional Chief Commercial Officer of fastjet, highlighted the policy barriers that continue to limit air connectivity across the continent
Protectionist bilaterals
While SAATM’s dispute mechanism has resolved almost 30 bilateral disputes, some African countries still rely on bilaterals to protect their national carriers and restrict new entrants.
Kitchin pointed out that this protectionist mindset could limit competition in their markets, particularly for smaller and newer carriers.
“The barriers to entry for smaller players to come in and to take advantage of niche routes that bigger airlines may not serve, have reduced over time. But, bilaterals remain a big constraint. It determines how many seats can be offered, how many flights can be operated, what revenue an airline can earn, but it’s limited in certain cases to protect some national carriers. This does not encourage competition and new entrants in the market,” said Kitchin.
Munetsi said African governments still had work to do to enable airlines to operate more freely across borders, improving access for travellers and supporting tourism and trade.
He pointed out that while there was a willingness among African countries to create open skies agreements, such as the Economic Commission of West African States (ECOWAS) open skies ambition, but they fell short when it came to implementation
“ECOWAS made a very bold statement, saying that they were going to do away with or reduce their taxes, fees and charges to enable the stimulation of traffic. This made everyone happy,” Munetsi said. “But then, two of those countries, Ghana and Nigeria, suddenly introduced new taxes of $100 (R1 700) each.”
A December 2025 study by IATA, found that taxes, fees and charges imposed on airlines in Africa were between 12% and 15% higher than anywhere else in the world, Kitchin added.
Industry voice needed
“Obviously, these policy and bilateral matters are restrictive. The costs to operate in certain countries are restrictive. And the travel trade is quite rightly asking, who’s the voice that will be heard?”
On the one hand, Munetsi noted significant developments with certain SAATM initiatives, such as the dispute mechanism.
However, Munetsi also called on the travel trade to work closely with associations and airlines and to put forward their own arguments on the benefits of improved African connectivity to regulatory bodies.
“What we would like to see in the future is travel agents and TMCs coming forward to assist us (associations and airlines) with petitioning the authorities when they bring up these kinds of limitations,” said Munetsi.
Kitchin predicted that if the travel industries work together to resolve these issues, Africa’s growth rate could be exponential.
“If we can unlock these benefits, there's no reason why Africa is not going to grow at 20% a year. Africa is already at 113% post-COVID recovery, so the trajectory is good,” said Kitchin.
“But we just can't leave this entirely in the hands of the regulators. We need to leave it in the hands of the flying public, the trade and the aviation entrepreneurs that want to make a difference.”
