On July 29, 2026, the African Airlines Association (AFRAA) published a comprehensive assessment of air connectivity across the continent. Drawing on OAG data covering the 100 busiest routes in each segment—domestic, intra-African, and international—the Routes and Connectivity Report for the second half of 2025 reveals an aviation landscape developing at markedly different speeds.
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An analysis of passenger volumes, hub concentration, and regional traffic patterns highlights clear winners, fragile links between regions, and one persistent geographical blind spot: Central Africa.
Domestic routes
With 13.4 million passengers across the top 100 routes, domestic travel is by far the largest market segment. Two countries account for the overwhelming majority of the busiest routes.
Cape Town–Johannesburg (CPT-JNB) tops the list with 1.99 million passengers, followed by Durban–Johannesburg (DUR-JNB) with 1.39 million. Nigeria’s political and economic corridor between Abuja and Lagos (ABV-LOS) ranks third with 850,000 passengers, ahead of Cape Town–Durban (650,000) and Cape Town–Lanseria (450,000).
In other words, South Africa accounts for four of the five busiest domestic routes.
“The prominence of the Cape Town-Johannesburg and Abuja-Lagos corridors illustrates the importance of key domestic routes as the backbone of national mobility and economic activity,” the report states.
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South Africa’s dominance of the busiest domestic routes, however, conceals a more nuanced reality. When ranked by the number of appearances in the top 100, Addis Ababa (ADD) leads with 13 appearances, followed by Johannesburg (12) and Lagos (12).
Although Ethiopia has no routes in the top five, it stands out for the density of its domestic network. According to the report, this reflects a dense but fragmented domestic network built around a large number of routes rather than a handful of major corridors, unlike South Africa’s more concentrated model.
Intra-African routes
Travel between African countries remains the weakest segment, with 4.1 million passengers across the top 100 routes—roughly one-third of domestic traffic.
Even so, the five busiest routes offer insight into the continent’s connectivity patterns. Tripoli (MJI)-Tunis (TUN) leads with 380,000 passengers, reflecting sustained mobility between Libya and neighboring Tunisia.
Harare-Johannesburg (HRE-JNB), with 225,000 passengers, and Mogadishu-Nairobi (MGQ-NBO), with 170,000, illustrate the economic and diaspora links connecting Southern Africa and the Horn of Africa with East Africa. They are followed by Algiers-Tunis (150,000) and Entebbe-Nairobi (130,000).
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“Intra-African connectivity remains concentrated around four hubs: Johannesburg, Nairobi, Tunis, and Cairo,” the report notes.
The hub rankings reinforce that conclusion. Johannesburg appears 22 times among the top 100 routes, followed by Nairobi (14), Tunis (12), Cairo (12), and Casablanca (10).
Most regional traffic therefore passes through a limited number of gateways rather than relying on direct point-to-point connections between secondary markets. While this hub-and-spoke structure strengthens the existing hubs, it also limits the emergence of new regional corridors and leaves the system vulnerable to localized congestion.
International routes
The international segment, which accounts for 9.3 million passengers across the top 100 routes, is dominated by one corridor: North Africa and France.
The five busiest international routes all involve Paris. Algiers-Paris Charles de Gaulle (556,000 passengers) and Algiers-Paris Orly (480,000) occupy the top two spots, followed by Orly-Reunion Island (450,000), Orly-Tunis (440,000), and Orly-Marrakech (380,000). Together, they reflect a combination of tourism, family travel, and diaspora traffic rooted in longstanding historical ties.
Paris Orly Airport (ORY) appears 20 times in the top 100 international routes, followed by Marrakech (18), Paris Charles de Gaulle (12), Cairo (11), and Algiers (10).
The report concludes that:
“International connectivity remains heavily concentrated around a single corridor—North Africa (Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, and Egypt) and France—rather than the Middle East or the Gulf, as seen during other periods.”
The report warns that such concentration exposes both airlines and national economies to bilateral dependency while leaving much of sub-Saharan Africa almost entirely absent from the continent’s busiest long-haul routes.
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Only one airport appears among the top five hubs in all three categories: Cairo (CAI), with eight appearances in domestic traffic, 12 in intra-African routes, and 11 internationally. According to the report, this reflects Cairo’s role as a well-balanced multi-purpose hub rather than a single dominant mega-hub, making it a more resilient model despite concentrating activity in one city.
No single airport dominates an entire segment. Addis Ababa leads domestic connectivity, Johannesburg tops intra-African traffic, and Paris Orly dominates international routes, yet each accounts for only a modest share of overall traffic.
The report also notes a “remarkable directional symmetry” across most route pairs, with average imbalances of less than 3%.
Three exceptions stand out. Domestically, Dar es Salaam-Zanzibar (DAR-ZNZ) records a directional imbalance of 20.5%, while Nairobi-Zanzibar (NBO-ZNZ) reaches 12.2% among intra-African routes. In both cases, Zanzibar functions as a seasonal tourism destination receiving significantly more arriving than departing passengers. Internationally, Hurghada-Zurich (HRG-ZRH) records a 7.3% imbalance, reflecting Egypt’s beach tourism market.
“Although modest in overall volume, these imbalances point to seasonal demand that should be anticipated when adjusting capacity,” the report recommends.
North Africa integrated, Central Africa left behind
One of the report’s most revealing findings comes from its subregional connectivity index.
North Africa records an internal connectivity rate of 74% and achieves its strongest interregional connection with West Africa at 34%.
Southern Africa reaches 49% internally but only 3% with West Africa.
East Africa records 48% internal connectivity, 22% with Southern Africa, but only 7% with West Africa.
Central Africa remains the most isolated region, with connectivity rates of 45% internally, 21% with North Africa, 15% with West Africa, 13% with East Africa, and 10% with Southern Africa.
Route maps show that Chad, Niger, and the Central African Republic have almost no scheduled air services despite their vast territories. These white spaces cannot be identified by simply ranking the top 100 routes because they do not appear in the rankings at all. The report identifies this as the most significant blind spot for continental integration.
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Against that backdrop, AFRAA outlines several strategic priorities.
The gap between the 4.1 million passengers traveling on intra-African routes and the 13.4 million traveling domestically illustrates the growth potential offered by the Single African Air Transport Market (SAATM). Yet significant challenges remain.
“Assessing the deployment of appropriately sized aircraft on low-volume, highly imbalanced, or underserved intra-African routes” has become an urgent priority, the report says.
It also recommends reviewing fifth-freedom traffic rights to reduce the current dominance of the Johannesburg, Nairobi, Tunis, and Cairo hubs, while assessing whether the concentration of traffic along the Maghreb-France corridor reflects a temporary trend or a structural weakness before drawing conclusions for future network planning.
Ultimately, the AFRAA report offers far more than a ranking of air routes. It maps an economic geography in which historical legacies, demographics, and the scarcity of major hubs continue to shape passenger flows. South Africa dominates domestic aviation, the Maghreb accounts for much of the continent’s international traffic, and a small group of hub airports sustains regional connectivity that, for much of Africa, remains more of a political ambition than a tangible reality.
