Speaking during the opening of the African Air Transport Convention and Exhibition 2026 in Lomé, H.E. Mr Faure Essozimna Gnassingbé, President of the Council of the Togolese Republic, positioned the single African sky as far more than an aviation policy objective. In his address, the African sky became a measure of how effectively the continent can connect with itself, reduce the fragmentation of its economic space and turn integration commitments into practical results.
“To speak of the African sky is not only to speak of air routes, airlines, airports or regulation,” he said. “It is to speak of the way Africa connects with itself.” For Gnassingbé, that makes aviation inseparable from mobility, trade, competitiveness and integration.
Africa has already made its strategic choice through the Single African Air Transport Market, the African Continental Free Trade Area and Agenda 2063. The remaining test is whether those frameworks are producing the visible results he identified: routes opened, costs reduced, delays shortened, and exchanges facilitated. Integration cannot be measured by adopted texts alone, it must be measured by what changes for passengers, businesses, traders, students, families and African economies.
Togo’s role as host to the convention currently underway speaks to the country’s ambition to position itself as a regional trade and logistics platform, which, Gnassingbé noted, only makes sense if it contributes to a wider African objective.
Gnassingbé, in his address, had four clear convictions, each pointing to a different part of the implementation challenge.
The first is that the single African sky must move from political commitment to operational reality. Africa has chosen integration because no country, acting alone, has all the critical mass required to respond to the challenges of economic transformation. However, that choice only becomes meaningful when it produces concrete effects: better-connected cities, more routes, lower costs and smoother exchanges.
The difficulty of connecting African capitals remains one of the clearest signs that the continent’s economic space is still too fragmented. Although the situation is improving, Gnassingbé noted that it can still be easier to connect an African capital to a capital outside the continent than to connect two African capitals to each other.
Moving SAATM into a more concrete phase will require air services agreements to be aligned, route openings to be facilitated, traffic rights to be better used, and priority corridors to be developed. Connectivity, he said, cannot be decreed. It has to be built through precise decisions, sustained commitments and regular coordination among States, regulators, airlines, airports and regional economic communities.
The second conviction is that air connectivity will only be useful if it becomes more accessible and more competitive. An open sky may still have a limited effect if air tickets remain too expensive, formalities too burdensome and visas too complex. Gnassingbé noted the cost of air travel as an integration barrier, not only a passenger issue. An expensive ticket affects entrepreneurs, tourism, students, families and traders. More fundamentally, it becomes a barrier to African integration itself.
This places taxation, charges and facilitation at the centre of the implementation agenda. Safety, security and quality requirements must remain high, but taxes, fees and charges need to be more transparent, predictable and better designed at a continental level. The same applies to visas, entry formalities, digitalised procedures, cargo management and the application of international standards.
The third conviction links aviation directly to the continent’s productive transformation. Passenger transport is only one part of the aviation story. Air transport is also economic infrastructure, with the potential to support agriculture, industry, health, digital trade, high-value exports and regional value chains.
That makes air cargo a strategic component of Africa’s logistics planning. The African Continental Free Trade Area will not produce its full effects only through the reduction of customs duties. It will require routes, corridors, logistics platforms, efficient procedures and the capacity to move goods between African economies.
Gnassingbé’s argument was not for aviation to compete against other modes of transport, but for air, road, sea and rail to be connected around coherent economic corridors, in a system that turns connectivity into competitiveness.
The fourth conviction, Africa must build a stronger, more innovative and sustainable aeronautical base. A competitive aviation sector needs modern airports, strong airlines, maintenance capacity, efficient ground handling services, reliable digital systems and clear regulatory frameworks.
Gnassingbé also placed skills at the centre of aeronautical sovereignty, aviation should be viewed as a productive sector capable of creating skilled jobs, developing technical know-how, attracting investment and offering young people prospects in the professions of the future. “Aeronautical sovereignty will not be built only with infrastructure,” he said. “It will also be built with skills.”
This requires better project preparation, anticipation of future needs and sustainability built into aviation planning from the start. Modernised operations, resilient infrastructure and environmental requirements are therefore part of the same long-term base.
