For Angola, African air connectivity forms part of a wider transport agenda built around corridors, trade flows, infrastructure and the cost of moving people and goods across the continent.
Ricardo Viegas D’Abreu, Angola’s Minister of Transport, brought this perspective to the ministerial panel during the inaugural African Air Transport Convention and Exhibition.
Speaking from Angola’s own experience, he linked aviation with the activation of African corridors and the broader objective of supporting the African free trade market.
Angola is already working from a corridor logic. The Lobito Corridor has become central to the country’s transport and trade strategy, linking infrastructure, regional access and economic movement. D’Abreu’s point is that aviation belongs in the same conversation. Air routes are another form of corridor, and in some cases, the quickest way to reduce the distance between markets.
Angola’s aviation approach has moved along several tracks, the country has undergone institutional, regulatory and legal reform. It has invested in infrastructure. It has also supported its national carrier in expanding connectivity across the continent. The next task is to sustain and consolidate the reform agenda.
The Minister’s view is that the continent understands the role aviation can play in growth and prosperity. What still lags is the translation of that ambition into working routes, reliable services and lower-cost connectivity. The issue, as he described it, is the need for financial solutions that can deal with what he called “depressed demand”.
In many African markets, a route or transport project may appear unviable because demand is not immediately visible. However, that demand may be suppressed by the same conditions the project is intended to solve. When infrastructure is lacking, services are limited, and routes are unavailable, the market cannot demonstrate its true potential.
D’Abreu’s argument is that supply often has to come before demand can fully develop. Infrastructure, services and route availability are not only responses to existing demand, but they are also the conditions that allow new demand to emerge.
Angola’s experience with corridor development reflects the same challenge of turning strategic plans into functioning transport links. D’Abreu referred to the work underway to extend the Lobito Corridor to Zambia, where feasibility studies identified a gap. Angola engaged development finance institutions and African financial institutions to help close the gap; air transport faces a similar challenge.
Agreements between countries may create the framework for new connections, but they do not automatically make a route commercially viable from the start. In many cases, there is an initial gap between the cost of launching a service and the traffic it can immediately generate. D’Abreu points out that this gap must be addressed so that routes have the time and support needed to develop demand and become sustainable.
This is the difficult space between political agreement and actual connectivity. A signed framework may create the conditions on paper, but it does not automatically put aircraft in the air. It does not carry early commercial risk, resolve infrastructure constraints or guarantee that a new service will survive long enough for demand to mature.
The Luanda-Zambia connection is a good example of this. The bilateral agreement was signed more than a year ago, yet the route is still not operational. However, D’Abreu indicated that he had “some good news”, suggesting that progress on launching the route may now be close.
D’Abreu also cautioned against African countries focusing too heavily on competing with one another to become regional hubs. In his view, the larger challenge is not a case of which country attracts the most traffic or positions itself as the dominant gateway. The priority should be in building a more integrated African transport system where countries complement each other, strengthen connectivity and collectively reduce the cost of moving people and goods across the continent.
He placed that cost burden in stark terms, saying logistics costs in Africa are four to five times higher than in the rest of the world because of insufficient infrastructure and services. Those costs are carried through the economy, affecting trade, prices and the cost of living.
If aviation is treated as a corridor, the question moves from who captures the traffic to whether the network makes movement easier and cheaper for African economies. This requires infrastructure, services, route development and finance to be aligned, rather than treated as separate issues.
Obviously, not every route should be flown regardless of its economics. Airlines still need viable operations, and investment decisions must be grounded in realistic assessments. The challenge, however, is that traditional measures of viability can underestimate African markets where connectivity has been constrained for years.
And to spell it out…a route with limited current traffic may not represent a lack of opportunity. It may reflect the fact that passengers, businesses and cargo operators have adapted to the absence of reliable links.
This is where governments, financiers and operators need to look at a different kind of calculation. Strategic connectivity often requires early coordination before commercial returns become obvious. Corridors are not built because all movement already exists, they are built because they create the conditions for movement to grow.
