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Africa targets safer skies
28/06/2007 21:53 - (SA)
Windhoek - Africa moved on Thursday to banish its reputation as a danger zone for air passengers by launching the first continent-wide civil aviation agency, based in Namibia.
The African Civil Aviation Agency (Afro-CAA) came into force after a signing ceremony in the Namibian capital Windhoek with the aim of putting Africa's air safety record on a par with the United States and Europe.
As well as its headquarters in Windhoek, the new agency will have regional offices in Libya, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Cameroon and South Africa.
Namibian transport minister Joel Kaapanda said that the new agency had been years in the pipeline.
"It took nearly four years to set up the continental agency which will produce and control civil aviation requirements and standards and harmonise regulations," said Kaapanda.
Mwangi waKamau, the chief executive of the new agency, said that Afro-CAA would train air traffic control officials and aviation inspectors to regularly inspect civil aviation facilities in the 53 African countries.
The civil aviation agency will be funded via membership fees from all African countries and through overflight fees.
Lack of money
"With the support of development partners, we will equip those African countries, which did not have radar and other modern air traffic control and communications equipment, with modern systems by 2010," waKamau told AFP.
"We will bring all civil aviation standards on par with those in Europe and the US," added the Kenyan.
African airlines represent 4.5% of world traffic but represented 34 percent of accidents in 2005, according to figures from the African Airlines Association (AFRAA). The body stresses that the vast majority of mishaps do not involve scheduled passenger flights.
The European Union last year published a black list of companies banned from its airspace, including 85 African companies out of a total of 92.
African air companies complain of a lack of money to follow increasingly stringent international safety norms, and some buy old Soviet-made aircraft or delay carrying out proper maintenance.
African Union aviation ministers who met in Addis Ababa in May, in the shadow of a Kenya Airways crash in Cameroon that claimed more than 100 lives, said that the continent's poor air safety record was largely due to its failure to implement existing safety measures.
- SAPA
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