1 Growth in Air Transportation of Sub-Saharan African Nations David

Growth in Air Transportation of Sub-Saharan African Nations * David Y. Chen and Abdussalam A. Addus ** Abstract Over the last decade, SSA nations have undergone unequivocal development in air transportation. This development has been exemplified by a 45 percent rate in passenger traffic which is comparable to that of the United States during the same period. This paper assesses the development of air transportation and its role in the transportation system in twenty five SSA countries from 1990 through 2006. The paper uses the number and quality of airports in 2006 and the1990-2004 progress in air transport performance as represented by the number of passengers and quantity of cargo handled by air ports and transported by air carriers and the number of aircraft departure. Based on the examination of these factors three groups of countries in SSA have been identified: countries with high growth rates, low growth rates, and negative growth rates in air transportation. The overall division of countries into these groups was based on the average growth rate in the performance factors (i.e., number of passengers, quantity of freight and aircraft departure). Eight countries have been classified into either high growth rate, low growth rate, or negative growth rate consistently in all of the factors. Noting that the relationship between air craft departure and air cargo is statistically insignificant, regression results indicate that in the twenty five countries of interest, an average increase of 141 passengers and 8,000 tons per kilometer result in an increase of one aircraft departure. * Paper for presentation at the 48th annual forum of the TRF, Boston, MA, March 2007. ** Both are associate professors, North Carolina A&T State University, Greensboro, NC. 1 Introduction In Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), road transportation dominates the transportation system. In this region air transportation, which has grown rapidly in the past years, appears to be next in significance to road transportation, with the remaining modes, air, water, and pipeline transportation, playing a minor role in the system(Addus and Khan, 2000). Over the last fifteen years Sub-Saharan African (SSA) nations have experienced unequivocal growth in air transportation (World Bank Groups, 2006). Data on the volume of air passengers and cargo traffic in twenty-five SSA nations indicate significant overall increases between 1990 through 2004.1 During this period, the overall growth rate of 45 percent (from 13.8 million in 1990 to 29.0 million in 2004) in SSA nation’s air passenger traffic is nearly par to the 46 percent (from 464.6 million in 1990 to 678 million in 2004) growth rate in the United States. The rapid rise in air transportation in SSA has brought forth many issues including changes in air transport infrastructure, high jet fuel price leading to higher airline operating costs, and safety problems with Trans- Atlantic flights, particularly, after the September 11, 2001 terrorist incidents in the United States (Mkiaru, 2004; Time, 2006). As the fastest mode of transportation, air transportation has time-saving advantages, which increases with the length of line haul operation, over other modes of transportation; and it does not require heavy investment in the construction the right of way as in the case of motor carriers, railways, pipelines. Yet not every SSA country has been able to take the full advantage of moving passengers and cargos by air. The uneven development in air transportation of the SSA countries calls for an investigation into the relative growth rates in these countries. 2 The purpose of this paper is to assess the development of air transportation in SSA countries, by providing a baseline account of airports, the volumes air passenger and cargo traffic, the number of aircraft departure from 1990 to 2004. It presents a statistical survey and analysis of the number of airports in 2006, the number of passengers and the quantity of cargo handled by airports and carried by air carriers, and the number of aircraft departure between 1990 and 2004 in twenty five SSA countries. These countries have been selected based on data availability. This paper is organized in the following way, methodology and data will be discussed in section two, airports will be presented in section three, Air transportation performance reported in section four, regression results discussed in section five, and last conclusions. Methodology and Data This study adopts a combination of descriptive and linear regression approaches to examine the development of air transport in twenty-five SSA nations, which have been based on data availability, from 1990 through 2004. The factors of interest for analysis include the number and quality of air ports, passenger and freight traffic volume, and number of aircraft departure. In the first phase, the number and quality of commercial airports in 2006, the 1990-2004 volume of passenger and freight traffic, and 1990-2004 number of aircraft departure were examined. The development of air traffic volume and aircraft departure was based on examination of data at every four to five-year interval in 1990, 1995, 2000 and 2004. In the second phase of the study, the relationship between air passenger and freight traffic and aircraft departure and between aircraft departure and air ports in the SSA region were investigated through linear regression method. The 3 results are evaluated by grouping the SSA nations according to the robustness of the growth (the relative growth rate in) in air transportation. Time series data on air cargo transport, air and cargo traffic, and airplane department have been obtained from the World Bank Groups’ ‘World Development Indicators (Source and date). Airport information has been compiled from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), International Transport Association (IATA), and other Internet sources, including Aircraft-charter-world.com, Aviation Networks, Inc., Azworldairports.com, Fallingrain.com, Wikipedia.com, WorldAeroData.com, and World-airport-codes.com. A few information gaps within the time series have been filed by using linear extrapolation method between two end points of each gap in order to maintain consistency of the published data. Accuracy of published time series data has been strictly maintained and no changes have been contemplated to the published data set. Airports in Twenty Five SSA Nations The earliest history of commercial airports in Sub-Saharan Africa can be traced back to the time when South Africa entered into the air transport age in the 1930s. The current Johannesburg International Airport was first opened in 1952 in South Africa, and it has reached the standard of any international airport in the world after major developments in 2002 and 2003 (www.Azworldairports.com, 2006). In many of the other SSA nations air ports were constructed before the countries gained their independence from European colonial powers. A case in point is the Zambia’s Lusaka International Airport that was built prior to the country’s independence in 19903 (1960?). Air ports in SSA countries are divided into airstrips, small domestic commercial airports, 4 large domestic commercial airports, and international airports. An airstrip is a piece of open field next to woods or grassland usable for small single engine propeller airplanes. Commercial airports, as defined by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration’s, are airports with scheduled passenger service and more than 2500 annual enplanements, with allowance for minor variation in some countries. International airports, as defined by, IATA, are airports fully equipped with paved runway of over 9800 feet to accommodate Boeing 747 jumbo or equivalent jets, air traffic control tower, and terminals with customs services for processing arriving and departing international passengers. Table 1 lists airport information in the twenty-five SSA nations as of 2006. (Put Table 1 below) Table 1 lists the number of commercial air ports international air ports, airports with paved runways, and the percentage of the later in the twenty five SSA nations in 2006. The total number of air ports range from 728 in South Africa to 2 in Sao Tome. Of the 2,762 airports in 24 SSA countries (excluding Botswana for which the number of total airports are unavailable), 37 percent (1,018) are commercial airports, and the remaining 63 percent are airstrips. The number of commercial airports for the 25 countries in question range from 195 in South Africa to only one in Sao Tome. The top four nations with large number of commercial air ports are South Africa (195), Kenya (172), Zimbabwe (129), and Botswana (101). It should be noted that South Africa is relatively a more advanced economy in the Africa continent as a whole. At the bottom of the list are countries, including Cameroon, Cape Verde, Gabon, Ghana, Mauritania, Mauritius, San Tome, Senegal, Seychelles, and Uganda, which have twenty or less number of commercial air ports. These countries are either small in number in terms of land area (San Tome and Principe), or have large undeveloped land (Mauritania). 5 Botswana, in descending order. Four countries, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Mauritius, and San Tome, with 100 percent (all) paved commercial air ports have the lowest number of commercial airports ranging from one to seven. The lowest paved commercial air port stands at 7 percent in Burkina Faso. Four the 25 SSA countries paved commercial airports average 34 percent. In these countries there are a total of 103 international airports. Tanzania has 10 international airports and Botswana, South Africa, and Sudan 8 international air ports each. Air Transportation Performance in Twenty five SSA Nations The twenty five SSA countries under consideration have been divided into three groups according to their air cargo, passenger traffic, and aircraft departure growth rates between 1990 and 2004. Because of difference in growth rates separate standards have been used to group the countries in these three areas.

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