Who will organize Africa’s future Aviation Growth?

By Adam Nathan

Africa will add roughly 1 billion people by 2050.

But much of the continent’s aviation growth could be captured in Istanbul, Dubai, Doha and Paris.

Foreign airlines already carry 64 percent of Africa’s intercontinental seats.

Now, can African carriers build hubs strong enough to change that?

Europe’s airlines built the first routes to carry traffic out of Africa.

Colonial trunk lines appeared in the 1920s; EgyptAir, South African Airways and Ethiopian Airline later built national networks.

After independence, the airlines changed, but many routes still led to the same foreign hubs.

For instance, North Africa, which is the continent’s biggest market secured 40.7 percent of scheduled seats in June 2025.

Its main airlines face in different directions.

EgyptAir reaches south and east.

Royal Air Maroc reaches west.

Air Algérie is domestic-heavy.

Tunisair mostly flies north.

Turkish, Emirates and Qatar can sell African passengers’ connections through Istanbul, Dubai and Doha to the rest of their networks.

Saudia has a different emphasis: more than half its African departures in our data went to Cairo.

Ethiopian gives passengers an African alternative: change planes in Addis for another African city or a flight farther abroad.

That brings travelers through Ethiopia who otherwise wouldn’t have a reason to fly there.

Ethiopian schedules flights to arrive in Addis together, giving passengers time to connect before the next wave leaves.

Pooling passengers from all those cities lets it support flights that Ethiopia’s local market couldn’t fill on its own.

South African Airways once tied Southern Africa together. In 2019 it served 32 destinations in 22 countries from Johannesburg.

Business rescue led to an 18-month shutdown and a 2021 restart with six aircraft and six routes.

Traffic returned, but most of South African Airways’ network did not.

After SAA shrank, FlySafair and Airlink took different parts of its old business.

FlySafair became the low-cost domestic leader and now holds 67 percent of South Africa’s domestic seats. Airlink built the regional network, with 49 destinations in 16 countries.

West Africa hasn’t built an equivalent to Ethiopian.

Air Peace had about 10 percent of West and Central African capacity, while Accra, Dakar and Abidjan each have their own gateways.

A large population doesn’t automatically give any one airline a connecting network.

Foreign airlines fill that gap on long-haul routes.

Air France serves 15 West and Central gateways and Brussels Airlines 13.

British Airways (BA) serves three.

The Royal Dutch Airline (KLM) serves only Accra and Lagos.

Paris and Brussels still have deeper networks into the region than any local airline.

Ethiopian is best positioned to capture that growth because it already has the connections.

Elsewhere, adding airplanes won’t be enough. African airlines need schedules that make changing planes at home as convenient as going through Dubai or Istanbul.