ROUTES AFRICA: World Bank Urges African Air Services Liberalisation

Posted 02/07/2011

African countries can improve air safety and promote their own economic growth and development prospects by putting into practice commitments they have made to open local air services to foreign operators, says a study by the World Bank.  “At present 31 African countries have poor safety standards, resulting in more air crashes than in any other region of the world,” said Charles Schlumberger, the World Bank’s lead air transport specialist and the author of the study, Open Skies for Africa.  “For them achieving an adequate safety and security oversight regime is the most urgent air services policy challenge.”

The study calls on African countries to implement commitments they made in the Yamoussoukro Decision.  This choice, named after the Ivorian city in which it was agreed upon in 1999, commits its 44 signatory countries to deregulate air services, and promote regional air markets open to transnational competition.  It followed up on the Yamoussoukro Declaration of 1988, in which many of the same countries agreed to principles of air services liberalisation.

Eleven years later, several African states are applying the principles of the Decision in bilateral air services agreements, but there is little evidence that it is being applied continent-wide.  The study concludes that about one-third of African states are reluctant to liberalise as this would expose non-competitive carriers to operational standards they would unlikely meet.

“A historic opportunity is being missed,” Charles Schlumberger told The HUB.  “Ten countries have not signed on to or completed proper ratification of this decision and many others that are signatories have not implemented it.  Meantime, most countries in Africa that have abandoned their ailing carriers and opened up to foreign operators now have air services, both passenger and freight, that are more efficient, safer, and with more competitive prices.”

Using official safety statistics, the study claims that over the past decade, Africa’s aircraft hull-loss accident rate is more than six times higher than those of Asia and Latin America, and more than 12 times higher than those of Europe and North America.  Prospects to reduce this accident rate would improve, according to the study’s findings, if African states applied bilateral sanctions against airlines that fail to meet safety standards established by ICAO.

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