Kenya must lead Africa's push for truly open skies

The notion of “open skies” has been invoked in Kenya with varying degrees of understanding. To some, opening Kenya’s skies means removing virtually all restrictions, allowing airlines from any country to enter the market and operate with few constraints.

This argument is usually framed around Kenya’s ambition to increase visitor numbers beyond roughly nine million passengers who pass through Jomo Kenyatta International Airport each year. In this view, greater access for foreign airlines would expand capacity, stimulate competition and make Kenya more accessible to international travellers.

A more nuanced school of thought advocates liberalisation of Kenya’s skies but principally within Africa. Its proponents argue that the removal of restrictions should be pursued through the Single African Air Transport Market (SAATM), an African Union initiative intended to create a unified and more liberal aviation market across the continent.

Launched in January 2018, SAATM seeks to loosen the restrictions that have long constrained intra-Africa air travel. Its ambitions include greater freedom over routes, capacity and fares, allowing African airlines to serve markets that have historically been protected or difficult to access.

The economic case is compelling. Better air links could make it easier for Africans to travel between countries without routing through Europe or Middle Eastern hubs.

Greater competition, in turn, would put downward pressure on fares and broaden consumer choice.  Improved connectivity could also support tourism, trade and investment, while creating jobs across aviation and the wider travel economy.

Perhaps the most consequential provision is the granting of fifth-freedom traffic rights. These allow an airline from one African country to carry passengers between a second African country and a third.

Properly implemented, such rights could transform the continent’s aviation map, enabling airlines to develop viable regional networks rather than being confined by the bilateral arrangements that have traditionally governed African air travel.

The distinction matters. An entirely open Kenyan sky would expose the domestic market to airlines from across the world. An African open sky, by contrast, would seek to integrate Kenya into a larger continental market while giving African carriers greater access to one another.

The two approaches may both be described as “open skies”, but they present markedly different policy choices with very different implications for Kenya’s airlines, consumers and position as an aviation hub.

A useful way to understand SAATM is as an attempt to dismantle restrictions across Africa’s air-transport market, effectively making intra-African travel domestic. The implications could be considerable. Taxes and charges can account for as much as 60 per cent of ticket prices, creating one of the continent’s most stubborn barriers to mobility. Removing such impediments could, in principle, cut the tax burden by up to 90 per cent.

Cheaper, easier travel would invigorate intra-African tourism and commerce. A Kenyan seeking a weekend of Lingala music in Congo could fly with Kenya Airways for little more than the cost of a trip to Mombasa. For travellers from Zambia, Malawi and elsewhere in southern Africa, Nairobi and Mombasa could become credible alternatives to South Africa for shopping and holidays.

Yet SAATM risks remaining more aspiration than reality. Of the 38 signatories, only 26 have adopted implementation commitments and just two are prepared to fully liberalise their airspace. Kenya is not among them. It should be.

Mr Khafafa is a public policy analyst