Why only 2% of Africans fly: Tax predators, states that block airline funds and open skies champions

A Nigerian music fan hoping to attend a Fally Ipupa concert in Kinshasa may find themselves taking a route via London that is twice as long, yet twice as fast and half the price. Ghanaian tourists dreaming of visiting the beaches of São Tomé, less than 1,000 kilometers away, must pay at least $400 for a one-way ticket via Lisbon, while an Italian can fly to Mallorca for around $20.

This absurd contrast captures the state of air travel in Africa.

Africa is home to 18% of the world’s population, spans more than 30 million square kilometers and has 21 million internal migrants. Yet it accounts for just 2% of global air traffic.

The paradox is not the result of a lack of demand or geography, but of a web of political decisions that have made intra-African flights among the world’s most expensive, scarce and unpredictable.

Who is helping African aviation take off and who is keeping it grounded?

Source: Atlantic Council Africa Center and Policy Center for the New South.

The new joint report by the Policy Center for the New South and the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center, titled Opening Africa’s Skies to Trade, Growth, and Jobs, offers an unsparing assessment of the sector and identifies both the countries holding it back and those that could help drive the rest of the continent forward.

The absurd cost of fragmentation

The first problem is regulatory failure. More than 70% of Africa’s bilateral air service agreements are restrictive, imposing limits on flight frequencies and aircraft types, requiring revenue-sharing with national carriers or prohibiting airlines from carrying passengers onward to third countries.

As a result, less than 20% of African airlines’ traffic takes place within the continent, compared with around 60% for European airlines within the European Union.

Opening a Kampala-Maputo route still requires intergovernmental negotiations that can take years. Uganda and Mozambique began talks in September 2024, but at the time of the report, no agreement had been signed and no direct flights existed.

This fragmentation is largely the result of governments seeking to protect their national carriers. Twenty-nine African countries operate state-owned airlines, often at a loss but viewed as symbols of sovereignty.

Read also : Airport traffic tops 22 million through July, up 8.8%

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has described Ethiopian Airlines as “our national pride,” with the airline’s annual revenue accounting for 4.5% of Ethiopia’s GDP. But this nationalist attachment has a darker side. According to a CNN investigation, the airline allegedly transported weapons in November 2020, at the beginning of the Tigray war, a claim the company strongly denies.

The history of Air Afrique offers another warning. Founded in 1961 by 11 French-speaking African countries, the airline collapsed in 2002 with $431 million in debt after decades of political interference, illustrating how aviation nationalism can lead to collective failure.

The second obstacle is taxation. In Africa, taxes, fees and public charges account for between 35% and 40% of ticket prices, compared with a global average of 20%.

On a short regional flight, African passengers pay an average of $68 in taxes per departure, more than twice the European average. In West Africa, the region most affected, the figure rises to $110.

On some routes, the International Air Transport Association estimates that charges exceed the base fare, with $60 to $70 in taxes on a $100 ticket. The burden falls particularly heavily on secondary routes that should be driving regional integration.

Governments often treat air travel as a luxury reserved for the elite. With only 2% of Africans flying each year, compared with more than half of Americans, taxing aviation carries little political cost.

Nigeria introduced an additional $11.50 “security tax” on every international ticket in December 2025, hoping to raise $49 million annually.

Tanzania, meanwhile, imposed a $45 “passenger facilitation fee” on every international ticket, the highest in the world. Such charges do not necessarily fund infrastructure. Nigerian airports rely almost entirely on passenger charges rather than public funding.

The problem of blocked airline revenues

The third major obstacle is the blocking of airline revenues.

When an airline sells a ticket in Nairobi or Lusaka, it receives payment in local currency. To pay for fuel, aircraft leasing and maintenance, which are generally priced in dollars, it must convert and repatriate those funds.

Yet several African central banks have refused or delayed such transfers.

Read also : Africa’s largest airline fleets in 2026: Ethiopian leads as Royal Air Maroc posts fastest growth

In Mozambique, the central bank withheld up to $205 million in airline revenues in early 2025 and reportedly failed to respond to IATA correspondence.

Nigeria accumulated $850 million in blocked airline funds, prompting Emirates and Etihad to suspend their flights in 2022. Ethiopian Airlines had more than $200 million blocked in several African countries, with its CEO describing the situation as a “serious concern.”

For cargo airlines, suspending a route does not simply cut a passenger connection. It disrupts a genuine trade corridor, precisely the kind of connectivity the African Continental Free Trade Area is meant to develop.

Finally, Africa faces structural energy dependence.

Despite holding between 7% and 8% of proven global crude oil reserves, the continent imports between $60 billion and $90 billion worth of refined petroleum products every year, including jet fuel.

Africa’s refineries have an installed capacity of between 3.5 million and 4 million barrels per day but operate at less than 50% of capacity.

Nigeria imported most of its refined petroleum products until 2024, when the Dangote refinery began changing the equation. Nigeria’s state-owned refineries had remained largely inactive for more than a decade.

The result is that 70% of Africa’s jet fuel imports pass through the Strait of Hormuz.

The war in Iran therefore hit an already vulnerable sector hard. Ethiopian Airlines lost $137 million in a single week following the closure of the strait.

“The impact is disastrous and represents a major shock for our members,” warned Abderahmane Berthe, secretary-general of the African Airlines Association.

Those showing the way and those holding the continent back

Against this bleak backdrop, some countries stand out.

Morocco, through Royal Air Maroc, plans to expand its fleet from around 50 to 200 aircraft by 2037, with the ambition of turning Casablanca into a hub for West Africa, partly supported by the 2030 World Cup it will co-host with Spain and Portugal.

Ethiopia, despite the controversies surrounding its national carrier, remains home to the continent’s leading airline.

Kenya and Rwanda are among the 11 “champion states” of the Single African Air Transport Market, launched in 2018, which are committed to removing capacity restrictions and mutually recognizing licenses.

The Economic Community of West African States decided in December 2024 to abolish four categories of aviation taxes and reduce charges by 25%, although IATA warns that implementation has been slow.

Read also : Royal Air Maroc gradually resumes flights to central Africa

At the other end of the spectrum, Nigeria and Tanzania illustrate the temptation of short-term tax revenue, while Mozambique highlights the problems of opacity and lack of recourse.

These countries are not merely a problem for their neighbors. Their policies reinforce perceptions of high African risk, which costs the continent an estimated $4.2 billion annually in additional sovereign borrowing costs.

The solutions proposed in the policy brief are all the more credible because they rely on mechanisms that have already been tested.

First, international financial institutions should focus their support on the 11 champion states, with the World Bank helping modernize legal frameworks and the International Finance Corporation mobilizing private investment.

Second, an annual ranking of all 54 African countries based on their aviation tax burden should be published, similar to IATA’s approach to blocked airline funds.

Nigeria only released its $850 million after being publicly named and abandoned by airlines.

Finally, arbitration mechanisms in bilateral agreements should be strengthened to give airlines faster recourse instead of leaving them with no option but to suspend flights.

Technology could also expand the market.

While most booking systems require a bank card, Jambojet and Kenya Airways accept M-Pesa, while Ethiopian Airlines accepts Wave, M-Pesa and Orange Money.

Read also : New European air passenger rules: Which African travelers are best protected by the reform?

Kenya’s Madaraka Express railway sells tickets through USSD codes without requiring passengers to own a smartphone.

Extending this model to aviation, with AI-assisted booking and mobile customer service, could reduce distribution costs and bring millions of currently excluded passengers into the market.

Reforming African aviation, then, is not primarily a question of money. It first requires political courage.

Countries willing to liberalize their markets, reduce taxes and guarantee the convertibility of airline revenues would not simply lower ticket prices. They could become hubs of intra-African trade, which is estimated to increase by nearly 50% under the African Continental Free Trade Area.

Those that continue to overtax the sector and block airline funds, by contrast, will keep isolating their economies, young people and businesses.

Africa’s skies are not closed by geography. They are closed by policy choices.

And for the first time, those choices are being clearly named.