At this summer's Africa Hospitality Investment Forum held in Windhoek, Namibia, there were calls to increase airlift in the continent, although I soon realized that this was an annual call.
The issue was made more visible by the journey to the conference related by Lola Ade-John, Nigeria’s minister of tourism.
From Nigeria's capital of Abuja, she flew to Lagos — Nigeria’s principal airport and economic hub — on to Addis Ababa, then to Johannesburg in South Africa and then to the Namibian capital of Windhoek.
Ade-John flew commercially and not through a private airport. She also stayed in Africa, rather than what would have likely been a quicker and less taxing flight to Europe and then a return over the African continent.
Now there's news that might help airline connectivity in Africa, and I do not want to raise a challenge one month and not at least mention what might be a solution, or a part of it.
Ethiopian Airlines, one of very few African airline powerhouses in a continent of 54 countries, said it will build a new airport that will quadruple the passenger numbers of its current hub, Bole International.
Roughly equidistant from capital Addis Ababa as is the current airport, the intended international airport in the town of Bishoftu will serve approximately 110 million passengers annually. As of September, the population of Africa is 1.52 billion. The first phase of the airport will be finished in 2029 and serve 60 million passengers annually.
This project certainly has scale.
Ethiopian Airlines’ Group CEO Mesfin Tasew said the airport will make Ethiopia a global aviation hub, and hopefully that will serve Africa proudly, not just the European cities that perhaps African airlines have always favored.
Changing air connectivity is not easy.
One has to change demand drivers, perhaps that of human desires to encourage them to see the wonders of their own continent, not just the wonders of, say, Europe.
Business opportunity will no doubt help the process, and Tasew adds that the “project will enhance connectivity, drive economic growth and prioritize environmentally responsible practices.”
There was a little muttering from attendees at AHIF that reaching Namibia was not easy, which for some travelers is reason enough to go to a place.
I just hope the developers and owners change the name of the airport before its first plane takes off.
So far from what I gather, its intended name is Mega Airport City, which sounds like somewhere that Judge Dredd would live, not a living, breathing lung for an entire continent.
Actually, it pretty much is named as the same location where Judge Dredd lived.
I know that, not because I read the 2000 AD-titled Judge Dredd comics in the 1980s and 1990s but because there's a reference to them in songs by bands such as Mega City Four, The Human League, Anthrax and Pop Will Eat Itself, for those of you who remember that era.
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