The Hidden Cost of Africa's Air Traffic Boom

22.05.12

Work on the ambitious, $400 million project began in 2007, with inaugural flights slated for 2012. The project is nowhere near completion, but represents a bold play for airspace in west Africa and beyond: over four miles of runway are under construction (the current offering in central Dakar is half that size.)

Blaise Diagne International Airport (BDIA) is part of an exploding trend on the continent: air travel. Taking flight seems an elegant solution to a prominent African problem. The lamentable road infrastructure across many countries slows the formation of trade distribution networks, restricts movement for ordinary people, and subjects road-dependent economies to price shocks when the cost of fuel spikes. What’s more, tens of thousands of annual road accidents amount to a ruthless theft of African lives.

Contrasted with flight maps from a decade ago, the proliferation of new routes connecting Africa to itself is astonishing. Once, traveling from Nairobi to Nouakchott required a pit-stop in Europe. Today, those cities, as well as Accra and Lagos, Lagos and Lusaka, Lusaka and Johannesburg are connected by direct flights. You can board a plane in Addis Ababa and wake up in Washington, D.C. The days of sporadic domestic flights on rickety carriers (one memorable flight to Abuja on the defunct Shanshangi Airlines comes to mind) are over; new low-cost, high quality carriers like Fly540, OneTime and Arik Air repeat the EasyJet model, puddle hopping across Africa. Senegal is using its pending airport as a selling point for new national carrier Senegal Airlines, a successor to the now-bankrupt Air Senegal International.

Source: The Atlantic Cities