Jonathan’s visit: Boost for Nigeria-South African air travel business

Nigeria and South Africa are Africa’s largest economies. Trade between the two nations has grown exponentially since 2,000, and they are each other’s largest trading partners on the continent.


The value of bilateral trade, which totalled only $16.5 million in 1999, increased to over $3.6 billion by 2011.

Nigeria now represents a long-term destination for South African investments and home to many of its recent business ventures. In the area of communications, Mobile Telephone Networks (MTN) posts greater profits from its West African operation than it did in South Africa within only four years of entering the Nigerian market.

As President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan visits South Africa on Monday next week, there are indications that both nations would look for ways to finally bring to an end crises that had threatened the cordial relationship that exist between them and to leverage on the good business relations.

Nigeria with a country of over 160 million people is a huge market for aviation. Though South Africa has a robust business aviation market, not a few believe that Nigeria would overtake South Africa as Africa’s biggest business aviation market in the next five to 10 years.

For general aviation, it’s probably the awareness of the authorities that general aviation is vastly different from commercial aviation. A lot of African countries are new to general aviation, and equally the authorities are new to general aviation.

I think there is some ground to cover in making sure that the aviation authorities understand the differences between commercial and general aviation from all perspectives. From an FBO point of view, I think challenges in Africa are service delivery in terms of the availability of fuel, general services like catering, ground support equipment, and so on. The challenge of aviation is service delivery.

Although, South Africa Airways (SAA) is going through a turbulent period, the carrier, no doubt is one of the strongest airlines in Africa after Ethiopian Airways and Kenya Airways.

SAA was facing the same problems that Nigeria Airways was facing then, but the government of South Africa injected funds into the airline and privatised it.

The President’s visit could also help to speed up the plan by his government to float a national carrier, as SAA could assist the country by acting as a technical partner to the proposed airline, which hope is evaporating by the day.

But the expectations are fast turning into a mirage. Not that the government does not know what to do; a clear-cut direction of what it exactly wants is glaringly lacking.

In one breath, the ministry said it would look for strategic partner(s) to give it the technical assistance it requires. In another breath, the government talks about entering into a Public Private Partnership (PPP) without giving Nigerians the clear direction of what exactly it wants to do.

Kenya Airline had to partner a foreign airline, KLM, for it to survive, but the Federal Government sold its airline because some powerful vested interests were eyeing the assets of the airline, which they wanted as their share of the national cake.

There is no denying the fact that Arik is not a pushover on the Lagos-Johannesburg route, both governments can work out modalities on flights between each other’s territory with a view to servicing the huge traffic on the lucrative route.

A top official in government who spoke on a condition of anonymity said the signing of a new Bilateral Air Services Agreement (BASA), which grants 20 weekly flights between both capitals by Arik and SAA, had also enhanced movement of people between both countries.

“Fourteen of these had already been taken up with daily flights by both.

“SAA has also been granted rights to fly into Abuja from Johannesburg and also Arik to fly into one more city after Johannesburg,” the source added.
http://www.ngrguardiannews.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=120557:jonathans-visit-boost-for-nigeria-south-african-air-travel
Culled from The Guardian Nigeria