The African aviation market is very interesting in the sense that the air traffic is expected to double in the next 20 years. Africa counts to 15 percent of the world population but only 2 percent of the air traffic. For many international airlines, the African market is very interesting because of their high profit and their stable passenger growth. And since now the traffic is increasing even more and is doubling in the coming years, it will attract even more stakeholders, airlines, but also investors and financers and then also the whole business world.
Africa is a market similar of the size of China but it's a fast-growing market and even more it's a fast-growing market in terms of middle class. So there are more people who are willing to travel and the airlines have realized that. Even more that the African market is not very familiar with low-cost airlines and we realized that in the market the low-cost airlines are booming, they are coming up. They have realized the important needs of the African population to travel by air and preferably to travel by air with low fares. So there is an important growth coming up. The bottleneck is still also of course the financing to develop the infrastructure but on the other side also the liberalization of the air transport market in Africa, which is still under protectionism. Once this is liberalized then the whole growth might come up.
I would say the advantage of so-called mature markets is they usually have the needs of upgrading the airports and they have also the financing. The situation in the African market is more they don't have the financing but there is a huge opportunity. So in the last year the market has counted 40 greenfield airports. So if this is going to be materialized it's an amazing market also for a ADB SAFEGATE. The issue is still the bottleneck with the financing. But let's say this has improved and the tendency of private public partnership is coming also on the African continent, then we have a huge market coming up for ADB SAFEGATE because all these airports will require the latest state-of-the-art technology. They will replace the whole airfield lighting systems, they will replace the tower systems, they will go for modern systems like the docking systems. And with all these changes we expect a big growth in the market. The only problem up to now is still the volatile market, it's changing, projects are postponed, are cancelled. Very often also because of the political situation in the country with elections, new presidents, new people, new strategies. We rely very much on having more stability on the African market in terms of political and economic growth, but once this is done and the African continent is on a good way for that then the market will intensify and specifically also for ADB SAFEGATE.
Our main aim is to promote what we can offer to customers more than what the customer knows we can offer. Traditionally they know we are in the airfield lighting, we are in the docking systems. They really know that we are in the tower systems, which we are trying to promote even more but even more important is we try to explain to the customer, to the airport, that we can offer a whole package, that we can offer a solution. And in fact, the time of being in the situation with customer and supplier is over, the time is now to have partnerships. And that's why we try to explain to the African airports, to the African customers, we are not here to sell a product or system. We are here to sell a partnership.
21 окт 2024
