Connectivity & Aviation
Routes, alliances, hub strategy, open-skies progress and the institutional architecture that determines who reaches Africa and how. The continent is structurally more open to external aviation partners than to fellow African states. This department tracks why, and what it means for the destinations whose tourism economies depend on connectivity they do not control.
Every African state protects its national carrier. Together they have built one of the world's most expensive skies.
Libreville to Bangui — two African capitals 1,000km apart — takes nine hours, a change of plane and $1,000; Paris to Madrid, the same distance, costs a fifth as much. Africa agreed to a single air market in 2018, yet only about a fifth of its air traffic is intra-continental and fewer than one in five routes has a direct flight. Every state protects its own carrier, and together they have built a sky so expensive that flying between African capitals is often cheaper through Europe — taxing the very tourism the continent says it wants.
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