Report No. 49194 africa infrastructure country diagnostic

IATA labels the top threat to safety in Africa to be poor regulatory oversight, followed by inadequate safety management systems, and lack of flight crew training and proficiency. The majority of the accidents in 2006 involved Eastern-built turboprop aircraft over 20-years-old. But as figure 3.1, focused on Western-built hulls, shows this is not the only concern.

Figure 3.2 Status of African safety oversight, using several criteria. Cape Verde, which has passed the FAA’s IASA audit and is rated category 1 in safety oversight, is not shown on this map.

The evidence points toward high levels of institutional weakness. Interestingly in figure 3.2 we note the oversight quality in some countries that act as important links with important airlines, such as Kenya and Senegal, compared with South Africa and Ethiopia. One of the main criteria, though not the only one, in the figure mentioned above is the overall result of the ICAO audits, which bear a statistically significant correlation to actual accidents.

The general policy conclusion for Sub-Saharan Africa would seem to be that at least as important as hard infrastructure is the creation of an oversight culture that would have the financial ability to share high-skilled inspectors, and have the political autonomy to enforce technical regulations to the point that true operational risks to air safety are mitigated.