Leadership dialogue: Towards a sustainable African MRO Ecosystem. What are the main barriers preventing smaller African airlines from utilising local MRO services?
The discussion on small-carrier maintenance at the African MRO Conference shifted the focus from diagnosis to implementation. If the earlier debate established that Africa’s maintenance, repair and overhaul market is constrained by capability, supply chain inefficiencies and fragmented regulation, this session made a narrower but equally important point: smaller airlines and smaller MROs are being squeezed by a system that remains too uneven, too opaque and too competitive in the wrong places.
A consistent theme throughout the discussion was that the technical challenge is only part of the problem. The more structural issue is that African MRO capacity is not yet organised in a way that allows smaller operators to access affordable, reliable and regionally available support. Capability exists in pockets, but not with enough coordination, visibility or reciprocity to function as a truly continental support system.
One of the clearest concerns raised was that maintenance delays remain existential for smaller airlines. When a check scheduled for 20 days stretches to 40 because of capability gaps, supply chain disruption or regulatory friction, the impact is not marginal. It can threaten the survival of the operator. In that context, the issue is not simply whether African MROs can do the work, but whether they can do it fast enough, affordably enough and predictably enough to keep small fleets in service.
The barriers described were familiar, but in this discussion, they took on a sharper operational meaning. Capability gaps remain significant. Supply chain costs continue to accumulate through logistics, customs and part movement across borders. Regulatory approvals remain fragmented, with one African civil aviation authority’s acceptance of an MRO not automatically translating into broader regional acceptance. Perhaps most importantly, there is still insufficient visibility across the continent about who can do what. The result is that African solutions may exist, but airlines and smaller MROs do not always know where they are.
That lack of visibility emerged as more than an administrative inconvenience. It is helping drive work out of Africa. When operators cannot identify reliable regional support, they tend to seek out what appears to be a more stable maintenance environment elsewhere. This has implications not only for airline costs but also for the retention of MRO value within the continent.
The discussion around collaboration exposed a more uncomfortable issue. While cooperation is often presented as a strategic priority, commercial behaviour on the ground does not always reflect that ambition. Smaller MROs may receive support during their establishment phase, but once they enter the market, the relationship can quickly become one of direct and sometimes aggressive competition.
In practical terms, this means large MROs may be willing to assist early on, yet later withhold access to tools or resources unless the commercial terms suit them. For smaller MROs and smaller airlines, that kind of market behaviour can be punishing.
The consequence is a distorted environment in which smaller carriers can end up paying disproportionately high amounts for urgent work, while smaller MROs are prevented from growing through the lack of meaningful resource-sharing. Rather than using the regional market to build depth across multiple providers, the system could concentrate work and revenue in a small number of larger organisations. That may benefit established players in the short term, but it does little to strengthen the wider African ecosystem.
Several speakers pointed to integration as the logical response. The most immediate proposal was the creation of a shared platform that would make continental MRO capabilities more visible. The underlying logic is straightforward. If African operators and MROs can see, in real time, what capabilities exist across EgyptAir, Ethiopian MRO, South African Airways Technical, Kenya Airways and others, then smaller airlines are better positioned to source support regionally rather than defaulting to external markets. The value of such a platform would not lie only in marketing capability, but in turning fragmented knowledge into usable operational intelligence.
Beyond visibility, the discussion also highlighted the need for a more deliberate approach to resource-sharing. Smaller operators do not have the scale to build expensive in-house facilities for every maintenance requirement, and smaller MROs cannot independently finance every capability. That makes partnership models necessary rather than optional. Yet the session suggested that partnership has to move beyond general declarations and into structured arrangements around tooling, hangar access, technical support, consultancy and co-development of facilities.
Financing remains one of the hardest barriers. Building maintenance capability, even at a modest level, requires significant investment. For small airlines, this is often unrealistic, particularly where work is outsourced anyway and foreign exchange exposure is already high. The more viable path identified during the discussion was therefore not full self-sufficiency but supported regional access. In this model, larger MROs act as anchor institutions, while smaller airlines and smaller MROs are supported through targeted capability-building, longer-term agreements and selective transfer of knowledge.
That point became especially important in the conversation on partnership models. Large MROs cannot reasonably be expected to develop expensive new capabilities for aircraft types or engine families that sit outside their own fleet exposure unless there is a clear and stable commercial case. This means smaller airlines seeking support from larger African MROs need long-term, non-fragmented business arrangements that justify the investment. Without that, collaboration remains rhetorical while actual capital decisions stay conservative.
Government policy and regulatory harmonisation were presented as another essential part of the solution. The discussion suggested that African MRO growth will remain constrained if it is treated as a secondary activity rather than a strategic industry. Examples such as special economic zones and aviation-focused ecosystems in places like Ethiopia and Dubai were raised as evidence that maintenance capability grows faster when policy, logistics, funding and supplier presence are aligned around it. More integrated local ecosystems, including aerotropolis-type development, could reduce friction and support more viable MRO expansion.
But regulation was not framed only as a development issue. It was also identified as a drag on operational efficiency. The repeated need for multiple approvals across African jurisdictions increases cost, slows component movement and discourages support between operators and MROs. The session pointed to the need for stronger alignment among African civil aviation authorities and suggested that bodies such as AFCAC could help convene this process. The underlying commercial point was clear: a continent cannot build a coherent MRO market if the same part, capability or approval has to be revalidated repeatedly across borders.
Technology and digitalisation were discussed in similarly practical terms. The value of digital systems was not framed as modernisation for its own sake, but as a means to reduce human error, tighten inventory control, improve purchasing decisions and link maintenance information more effectively to broader business systems. Yet even on this the discussion returned to planning discipline. Better systems are only useful if operators and MROs use them properly. The same thinking applies to capacity. African MROs argued that capacity shortages are not always purely a supply issue. In many cases, operators approach MROs too late, with incomplete work scopes or poorly forecast maintenance requirements, making it harder to allocate slots and manage the pipeline effectively.
This was an important qualification. Capacity in African MRO is not only about the number of hangars or technicians available. It is also about how maintenance demand is signalled, planned and scheduled. If airlines come in late, even existing capacity becomes harder to use efficiently. This partly explains why some operators end up going outside Africa despite the presence of regional providers. By the time the work becomes urgent, the most suitable African slots may already be unavailable.
Training and workforce development were positioned as another non-negotiable requirement. Smaller MROs cannot grow beyond the aircraft types of their domiciled airlines unless they invest in additional type training, recurrency, structural capability and specialist shops. The discussion reinforced that training is a commercial necessity, not a discretionary cost. If local providers cannot support broader operator needs to an acceptable standard, those contracts will move elsewhere.
What gave this session more weight than a generic policy discussion was its move towards specific commitments. A shared African parts pool and stock-visibility platform was proposed as a concrete initiative to support AOG response, particularly for smaller operators that cannot afford to hold large inventories. Regulatory alignment was identified as a strategic priority, alongside knowledge transfer from larger MROs to smaller providers. Kenya Airways MRO committed to supporting capability-building for Embraer operators over the next two years. South African Airways Technical signalled support for making capability more visible through AFRAA’s work. Aero Contractors committed to using African MROs for technical training rather than relying on external providers.
Taken together, these proposals reflect a growing recognition that Africa’s MRO challenge is not only one of missing capability, but of missing structure. The continent does not necessarily need every provider to invest in every capability. What it needs is better coordination of investment, clearer specialisation, stronger planning discipline, more transparent resource-sharing and a more coherent regulatory environment.
The broader lesson from the session is that a sustainable African MRO ecosystem will not be built by isolated expansion. It will depend on whether the sector can move from fragmented competence to organised interdependence. Smaller airlines need affordable access. Smaller MROs need room to grow. Larger MROs need to act not only as competitors but as anchors in a wider ecosystem. Without that shift, Africa will continue to export maintenance value, even where the building blocks for solving the problem already exist within the continent.
