Multi-faceted Africa
The Air Cargo Africa trade fair took place for the fifth time late in February – and it was one of the best meetings the pan-continental conference has had so far. This may also have been owed to impulses from the German event organiser Messe München, which took over management of the event last year. ITJ airfreight editor Andreas Haug was on site to record the voices and moods of the continental industry.
Allow me to point one thing out to start off with – the fact that African aviation is currently making some negative headlines in the mass media is not down to Ethiopian Airlines, a carrier renowned in the industry, but rather to the technical defects of the Boeing B737, one of which crashed shortly after takeoff from Addis Ababa airport on 10 March. Two weeks before this there was a mood of optimism in Johannesburg – or in Ekurhuleni, to be precise, a stone’s throw from O.R. Tambo international airport (JNB).
Under the title ‘Liberalisation and modernisation’, airfreight decision-makers from all over the world met to make contacts at the trade fair and discuss trends at the conference. Charles Shilowa, the group executive business development officer of the Airports Company South Africa (Acsa), which operates Africa’s largest airport, welcomed the choice of theme for the event in his opening remarks. “Bilateral agreements will favour intra-African trade and increase airfreight volumes by 6% by 2030,” he believes.
According to Shilowa, Acsa itself is preparing for this by equipping JNB with a new terminal with an annual capacity to handle 2 million t of cargo.
South Africa’s special status
Vuyani Jarana, chief executive officer of South African Airways, also under- lined the benefits of continental liberalisation offensives. One is the African Conti- nental Free Trade Agreement, signed by 44 member states of the African Union, and the second one envisages the creation of a single African air transport market under an African Union initiative to establish a single unified air transport market in Africa. Now that the framework conditions have been created, the continent must proclaim the fourth industrial revolution, the SAA manager said. His airline is playing its part by investing in infrastructure and partnerships with regional providers.
Only 35% with a postal address
At the following panel discussion, moderated by Glyn Hughes, Iata’s global head of cargo, South Africa’s special position and exemplary function shimmered through time and again. David Logan, CEO of the South African Association of Freight Forwarders (SAAFF), pointed out that e-commerce is now a fact of life across the entire nation; Kenya Airways COO Jan de Vegt added the caveat, however, that only 35% of all Africans have a postal address.
“Government initiatives are essential ele- ments to progress in the fields of trade and transport,” according to Sanjeev Gadhia, CEO and founder of Astral Aviation. He also took the opportunity offered by the conference to present the drone projects supported by his company in East Africa. Brussels airport’s cargo director Steven Polmans said that the various government’s efforts have to be seen in the right light. “Some may be investing, but others are doing too little to prepare to cope with the growth forecast for the continent over the next three decades.”
Omnipresent absentees
The fact that Africa is still, or more and more so, considered the ‘last frontier’ was also discussed at the trade fair. Lufthansa Cargo CEO Peter Gerber (see also page 13) attended the event for the first time, underlining the importance of the continent’s local, regional and international markets for his airline, which now serves 33 African destinations with 177 flights a week – having recently taken over freight management for Brussels Airlines.
Qatar Airways did not have its own stand at the meeting, but in an interview with the ITJ its freight boss Guillaume Halleux (see page 15) made it clear what the global player expects from the predicted doubling of the continent’s population – and thus the number of consumers too – over the next 20 years. In addition, his airline’s home base is ideally located between Africa and China, from a geographical point of view.
Chinese exhibitors were the big absentees at the event, but the spread of the people’s republic initiatives all across the continent were repeated topics of discussion in meetings. Relations with the United Kingdom, the country’s former coloniser, were also discussed. It remains to be seen whether Polmans, who says he predicted the election of Donald Trump as US president and the outcome of the UK’s referendum for Brexit, is also right with his opinion that the UK will apply for a return to the EU within a decade of leaving the union.
