- Air Travel To East Africa on the Surge as investors tilt eastwards
Contrary to false hopes given to Nigerians with the Nigeria Customs Service yesterday’s slashing of import duty exchange rate to N303 from N306, the nation’s currency today fell to N429 in Apapa, Lagos.
The Service slashed it’s duty exchange rate, affirming it as a directive of the CBN, and momentarily releasing a burst of life unto the International business class.
But, Stakeholders had barely finished the clinking of their glasses in celebration of the new directive from the Central Bank of Nigeria to the Customs, when news from Tetrazzinni – Randle axis of Apapa indicated that the Naira, in its usual character has fell to N429 per Dollar, even as it built it’s tent at N468 to the Euro and N550 to the Pound Sterling.
“You want to go Ikeja to go and buy?” laughed a Mallam, when told to reduce price otherwise the correspondent would go to Ikeja, before adding that it is the same price that obtains, whether in Ikeja, Lagos Island or Apapa.
It was learnt that the currency actually exchanged on Tuesday for N424 to the Dollar; N471 to the Euro and N550 to the Pound Sterling.
Courtesy of the CBN, the Naira has however at the interbank market, Continued to exchange at N310.08 to the Dollar.
“Looks like we are now going to have a three tier arrangement in the long run. One for the importers, one for the interbank and the dangerous one, for the black marketers!”, observed a freight forwarder, Oluchukwu, adding “Where do we go from here?”.
In the meantime, a January to August 2016 analysis of International air travel to East Africa done by ForwardKeys, a company that predicts future travel patterns by crunching and analysing 14m booking transactions a day, has revealed a strong growth of 11.2 percent, compared to the same period of last year.
It was also described as an exceptional growth performance for Africa as whole, which had been 5.6%, with countries like Algeria, Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia seeing little growth or even a decline.
Olivier Jager, CEO, ForwardKeys, said:
“We are seeing a tale of two Africas, with North African countries suffering from political instability and terror activities and Sub Saharan African countries powering ahead, with Ethiopia up 9.6%, Tanzania up 10.6%, Mauritius up 11.6% and Kenya up 14.9%. South Africa is up 11.4%”, highlighted the ForwardKeys CEO, Olivier Jager, in a statement made available to the Maritime First yesterday.
“Looking ahead to the remainder of the year, the picture is highly encouraging for East Africa. International bookings for travel to East African countries, up to the end of December are 17.3% ahead of where they were at this time last year. Looking at the main origin markets, the UK is 13.2% ahead, Germany is 21% ahead, The USA is 21% ahead, France is 16.1% ahead, the Netherlands is 16.6% ahead, South Africa is 9.4% ahead and India is 34% ahead.
“An analysis of airport capacity, defined by the total number of seats, reveals that the stars in terms of growth are Nairobi, Kigali and Kilimanjaro. Looking at international capacity in the periods Q3 2015 – Q2 2016 and Q3 2016 – Q2 2017, Nairobi grew 0% and 2% respectively, Kigali 5% and 4% respectively and Kilimanjaro 11% and 20% respectively. Whilst a 2% growth for Nairobi may not sound so impressive, its capacity is around four times that of Kigali.
“Looking at capacity for flights within East Africa in the periods Q3 2015 – Q2 2016 and Q3 2016 – Q2 2017, Nairobi grew 0% and 2% respectively, Kigali 13% and 5% respectively and Kilimanjaro 6% and 14% respectively”, he concluded.
The data was released ahead of AviaDev, a new airline route development conference and AHIF, Africa’s highest profile hotel investment conference, which run concurrently at the Radisson Blu Hotel & Convention Centre in Kigali from 4-6 October 2016.
Speaking in the same vein, Jonathan Worsley, Chairman of Bench Events, which is organising AHIF and AviaDev, described it as good development.
“We are seeing unprecedented interest in the AHIF AviaDev combination, with over twenty airlines signing up to talk about new air routes, with global CEOs of the world’s biggest hotel companies present to discuss their plans for Africa and with government ministers keen to attract inward investment; one has to ask: “Why is there such serious interest?” These highly encouraging booking figures explain it.”
Jonathan concluded: “If what is happening in Rwanda becomes a yardstick against which other East African countries measure themselves, I would expect this strong growth to continue. There, a new airport is under construction 25km outside Kigali, with the ability to cater for 4.5 million passengers/ year, seven times today’s traffic. The national airline has invested in new aircraft and set itself ambitious growth plans and the government is actively promoting Rwanda as a destination for conferences and exhibitions.”
