(Posted 24th August 2026)
Courtesy of Mr. Derek Nseko
Africa has already tried to build the airline group it increasingly appears to need. More than once.
There was East African Airways, jointly owned by Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, flying an impressive network from East Africa to Europe and Asia before the political compact beneath it collapsed in 1977. There was Air Afrique, perhaps the continent’s most ambitious experiment in multinational aviation, a single airline serving a bloc of West and Central African states, carrying the ambitions of newly independent nations far beyond the continent.
There was Alliance Air, an attempt in the 1990s to marry South African Airways’ scale and expertise with the ambitions of Uganda and Tanzania.
There was Virgin Nigeria, which tried a different formula, Nigerian capital and national identity paired with Virgin Atlantic’s international brand and aviation expertise.
More recently, Kenya Airways and South African Airways contemplated something bigger still, a Pan-African Airline Group that was supposed to take shape from 2023. Kenya Airways described it at the time as a step toward both SAATM and the African Continental Free Trade Area. It never became the group its architects envisaged.
Africa’s aviation market is fragmented among dozens of countries, relatively small airlines and thin individual traffic flows. Aircraft are expensive. Engines are expensive. Technology is expensive. Training is expensive. Maintenance is expensive. Capital is particularly expensive.
Scale matters. Yet aviation remains one of the industries in which African governments are least willing to surrender sovereignty. The economics of African aviation are increasingly continental. The politics of African aviation remain stubbornly national.
The airline Africa once had
Air Afrique remains perhaps the clearest place to start. Created in 1961, the airline eventually brought together multiple West and Central African states in one extraordinary experiment. Rather than each relatively small country attempting to support a fully fledged intercontinental airline, they pooled traffic, capital and infrastructure behind one carrier.
For a time, the logic worked. Air Afrique connected African capitals with each other and with Europe, the Middle East and the United States. For landlocked countries in particular, its importance extended well beyond passenger travel. A World Bank assessment later noted that when the airline disappeared, Burkina Faso lost regular air links that had also supported exports of perishables including fruit, vegetables and green beans.
But Air Afrique also exposed the weakness at the heart of multinational state ownership. Who really owns an airline owned by everyone? Whose citizens get the jobs? Which government injects money when another does not? Commercial decisions become diplomatic negotiations.
By its final years, Air Afrique had become badly overstaffed and financially distressed. The World Bank recorded around 4,200 employees supporting just seven operating aircraft near the end, and debts of roughly $500 million. It ceased operations and entered bankruptcy in 2002. The idea had not necessarily been wrong. The governance had simply become impossible.
East African Airways offers an eerily similar lesson. By 1975, the jointly owned airline had 16 aircraft and an international network stretching from East Africa to London, Frankfurt, Rome, Bombay, Karachi and elsewhere. But deteriorating relations among Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda infected the corporation itself. Funding disputes intensified. Services stopped in early 1977. The shared airline disappeared alongside the old East African Community, and three national carriers emerged from its remains.
The cost of the flag
An airline is an unusually expensive instrument of national pride. A small flag carrier still needs management, systems, training, maintenance capability, working capital, and access to aircraft that are largely purchased, leased, maintained and insured in hard currency.
This is where fragmentation becomes expensive. Each small African carrier negotiates separately with lessors, manufacturers, engine companies, insurers, maintenance providers and technology companies. Each develops its own sales infrastructure. Each maintains its own operating certificate, systems and management structure.
And many then attempt to build regional networks, operate long-haul aircraft and compete with global airline groups possessing hundreds of aircraft and enormous purchasing power. Africa’s problem may therefore not be that it has too many airlines. It may be that it has too many subscale airlines attempting to behave like complete airline groups.
Alliance Air tried another way
In the 1990s, Alliance Air attempted to bridge that divide. South African Airways joined Uganda and Tanzania in a multinational airline based at Entebbe. The strategic logic was compelling, SAA brought aviation expertise and access to aircraft, East African partners provided markets and traffic rights. Together they could create a regional network and long-haul operation with greater scale than the smaller national airlines could achieve independently.
Again, politics intervened. Tanzania became suspicious that SAA was using the partnership to extend South African dominance into the region. The partners disagreed over funding and control. SAA’s parent eventually stopped financing the losses.
Alliance Air reportedly required around $420,000 a month in subsidies to sustain its long-haul operation and had accumulated approximately $50 million in losses by the time it disappeared in 2000.
You can import expertise. You cannot import institutions.
Virgin Nigeria tested yet another model. Instead of combining African governments, Nigeria brought in a global airline partner.
Virgin Atlantic took a significant minority position in the new carrier and attached one of aviation’s most recognisable brands to what was supposed to become a credible successor to the defunct Nigeria Airways.
On paper, it addressed many of the problems African national carriers struggle with – brand credibility, commercial expertise, international experience and private capital.
It still unravelled. Relations between Virgin and the Nigerian government deteriorated, including a highly public dispute over the airline’s domestic operations at the airport in Lagos. Virgin withdrew from the venture. The Virgin name disappeared. Successor incarnations eventually followed, before Air Nigeria ceased flying in 2012.
A strategic investor can bring capital. It can bring management. It can bring aircraft, systems, expertise and credibility. But it cannot compensate indefinitely for an unpredictable operating environment.
The strategic investor everyone wants
South African Airways spent years searching for one. After entering business rescue in 2019, the South African government concluded that the restructured airline needed private capital and expertise. Takatso Consortium was selected to acquire 51 percent of SAA and was expected to inject R3 billion in working capital over two years. The government explicitly presented the partnership as a way to build a commercially sustainable airline without continued dependence on taxpayers.
Three years of negotiations followed. Then the deal collapsed. Among the central problems was valuation. SAA had been valued under extraordinary pandemic conditions when its business was effectively worth little. By the time the transaction approached completion, aviation had recovered and a new assessment valued the airline business at R1 billion and its property portfolio at R5.5 billion. The parties could not agree on a revised transaction structure. Competition requirements and the sheer length of the process added further complexity. SAA remained wholly state-owned.
Now Kenya Airways is again confronting the same broad question. The airline’s board has said that securing a suitable strategic investor remains part of its turnaround strategy and the airline has promised one by December 2026.
Kenya Airways knows the model better than most African carriers. Its earlier relationship with KLM was one of the continent’s most consequential airline partnerships.
But KQ also participated in a more ambitious proposal. In 2021, Kenya Airways and SAA announced plans for a broader Pan-African Airline Group. The idea was strategically fascinating, two established African brands, two important hubs and complementary geographic positions combining into something capable of achieving greater continental scale. It did not materialise as envisioned.
Ethiopian has chosen a different path
There is, however, another African experiment underway. It looks quite different from Air Afrique.
Ethiopian Airlines has spent more than a decade quietly constructing something resembling an African airline system without requiring countries to surrender their national carriers.
In West Africa, Ethiopian helped develop ASKY and Lomé as a regional hub. When the partnership was established, Ethiopian took an equity stake and a management role, explicitly describing the project as part of a strategy to develop multiple African hubs. Its 2023/24 annual report recorded a 22.46 percent holding in ASKY.
In Malawi, Ethiopian took 49 percent of Malawian Airlines, alongside a technical and management role.
In Zambia, it took 45 percent of Zambia Airways, with the Zambian state retaining 55 percent. The shareholders initially committed $30 million, while Ethiopian explicitly described Lusaka as part of its multi-hub African strategy.
And in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopian now owns 49 percent of Air Congo, with the Congolese government holding 51 percent and Ethiopian managing the carrier.
The model is fascinating precisely because it acknowledges Africa’s political reality rather than fighting it. Zambia can still have Zambia Airways. The DRC can still have Air Congo. Malawi can still have its national carrier. Togo retains a locally rooted airline and hub.
But behind those national identities sits an increasingly interconnected aviation ecosystem anchored by Ethiopian expertise, network access, fleet knowledge, management capability and scale. This is not consolidation in the traditional merger and acquisition sense but it may be far better suited to Africa.
Fewer airlines or less duplication?
This is where the consolidation debate often goes wrong. Africa does not necessarily need one giant airline. Nor should the objective simply be eliminating national carriers.
The real prize is scale. Europe still has Lufthansa, SWISS, Austrian Airlines and Brussels Airlines. British Airways still looks British and Iberia still looks Spanish.
But beneath those brands sit airline groups capable of consolidating capital, procurement, technology, loyalty programmes, fleet decisions and corporate infrastructure.
The passenger sees national identity. The balance sheet sees scale. That may be a more useful way to think about Africa’s future. Perhaps Africa does not need dramatically fewer airline brands.
Could airline groups negotiate aircraft and engine deals collectively while retaining local brands?
Could capital be deployed at group level rather than every small national airline independently trying to convince global financiers of its creditworthiness?
These are less politically glamorous questions than launching a new flag carrier. But they may be far more important.
SAATM could force the issue
For decades, protectionism has partly insulated African airlines from this conversation. Governments could restrict frequencies, designations and market access in the name of protecting national carriers.
A genuinely liberalised Single African Air Transport Market changes that equation. As barriers fall, a small airline is no longer competing only within its protected home market. It may increasingly compete with Ethiopian, Kenya Airways, Air Côte d’Ivoire, ASKY, Airlink, RwandAir, EgyptAir or Royal Air Maroc for the same passengers. Scale begins to matter even more.
AFRAA estimates African carriers generated only about $200 million in combined net profit in 2025, against roughly $36 billion globally. Africa still accounts for only around 2 percent of global air traffic.
Those are difficult economics from which to sustain dozens of ambitious, capital-intensive airlines operating independently. SAATM may therefore produce an unintended consequence. Its greatest legacy may not simply be creating more routes. It may force airlines to cooperate, specialise, partner or consolidate in order to survive them.
Bigger is not the same as better
There is a warning here. Air Afrique demonstrates it. Combining weak airlines does not automatically create a strong airline. Sometimes it simply creates a larger weak airline.
Consolidation cannot substitute for governance. It cannot repair political interference. It cannot make an uneconomic network profitable merely by making it bigger. And it cannot succeed when shareholders regard an airline primarily as an instrument for patronage, prestige or national competition.
Successful consolidation must produce something tangible. Lower costs, greater purchasing power, stronger networks, better utilisation, professional management, access to capital, common systems, and clearer accountability. Otherwise there is little point.
The airline Africa keeps trying to build
There is something striking about the persistence of this idea. Air Afrique disappeared. East African Airways disappeared. Alliance Air disappeared. Virgin Nigeria’s strategic partnership unravelled. The proposed SAA-Kenya Airways continental group stalled. SAA’s Takatso transaction collapsed. Kenya Airways is again looking for strategic capital. And Ethiopian continues assembling partnerships across the continent. Different eras. Different structures. The same underlying economic question. How do African airlines achieve the scale necessary to compete without asking African governments to surrender the national identity they attach to their carriers?
Perhaps Ethiopian’s model offers part of the answer. Perhaps future consolidation will happen through airline groups. Perhaps it will happen through equity investments, joint ventures and common fleet platforms. Perhaps some airlines will eventually merge. Others should probably disappear. But Africa may not need to recreate Air Afrique to rediscover the economic logic that created it. The continent does not necessarily need one airline. It needs an aviation industry capable of behaving less like dozens of isolated national projects and more like a continental commercial system.
That means pooling capital where it makes sense. Sharing infrastructure. Building complementary networks. Consolidating procurement. Developing common technical capabilities. And accepting that every country does not need to independently replicate every layer of the airline business.
For decades, African aviation has been caught between two ambitions, the emotional power of the flag and the economic necessity of scale. More often than not, the flag has won.
But liberalisation will make that choice harder to sustain. As markets open, weak economics will become more difficult to hide behind protected traffic rights and national sentiment. Aircraft financing will still reward stronger balance sheets. Maintenance will still favour scale. Networks will still favour density. Procurement will still favour size.
The future of African aviation may still carry many flags. But its strength will depend on what those flags are willing to build together.
