Aviation was a strategic enabler for African social and economic development, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) has highlighted, at its Focus Africa Conference, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and African countries should prioritise the sector. IATA is the global representative body for the airline industry.

“Aviation is economic infrastructure for Africa,” emphasised IATA Regional Vice President for Africa and the Middle East Kamil Alawadhi. “Its value lies in the long-term benefits it delivers. An aviation strategy focused on safety, cost-competitiveness, energy security/sustainability, and ease of doing business will create jobs, enable trade, support tourism, and further regional integration. The prosperity this generates will allow governments to push forward social and economic development more durably than any tax that might be collected from travellers.”

Regarding safety, the continent had seen substantial progress. The African aviation accident rate had fallen from 12.13 per million sectors in 2024 to 7.86 in 2025. But it was still the highest in the world, far above the global average of 1.32. The association urged that all those participating in the IATA Collaborative Aviation Safety Improvement Programme focus their resources on three areas – increasing implementation of International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) Standards and Recommended Practices (the average implementation rate in 46 of the 48 Sub-Saharan African countries was 60.34%, while the global average was 69.46% and the global target was 75%); publish accident investigation reports (from 2019 to 2023, only 19% of African accident reports were published, compared with the global average of 63%), as the failure to complete and publish these reports hampered the improvement of safety; and make use of global safety audits, such as the IATA Operational Safety Audit, the IATA Standard Safety Assessment, and the IATA Safety Audit for Ground Operations.  

A second issue that needed addressing was the cost-competitiveness of African aviation. Across the continent, the cost of doing aviation business was high. This was largely the result of high taxes and charges by governments and infrastructure providers, which, in Africa, were 15% higher than the global average. IATA urged African governments to reverse their trend of increasing these taxes and charges. In West Africa, it called for States to implement the December 2025 decision by the Economic Community of West African States to abolish aviation taxes and cut selected charges by 25%. Also, African countries should continue to support residence-based corporate taxation for airlines, instead of opting for source-based taxation, as implementing the latter would be very complicated (it could easily involve several jurisdictions) and risk double-taxation.

A further matter was the need to make it easier for airlines to do business in Africa. IATA highlighted two particularly concerning issues. One was the need for countries to allow the smooth repatriation of airline funds, as required by international treaties. Several African countries were together responsible for the greatest part of blocked airline funds, worldwide. These States (Algeria, the Central African franc zone, Mozambique, Eritrea and Angola) had blocked a total of $774-million, as of the end of March this year. The other issue was the need to reduce the need for visas for intra-African travel. Nearly 50% of intra-African travel still required visas, and this was undermining intra-African tourism and economic integration, and so slowing economic growth and development.

As for energy security and sustainability, recent disruptions in the global energy supply system highlighted the need for African countries to encourage and facilitate the production of sustainable aviation fuels. An IATA study showed that sub-Saharan Africa could be producing 106-million tons of suitable feedstocks for SAF by 2050. African countries should also support the only globally-agreed economic framework to manage the climate impact of aviation, namely ICAO’s Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation. African countries should also offer Eligible Emission Units (EEUs), which could be a valuable source of climate finance. So far, only Gambia, Madagascar, Malawi, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Tanzania had made the first steps to enter this market, but the potential was huge – African as a whole could release about 57.6-million EEUs to airlines.