Fifteen years after launching the EAC Common Market, the dream of a united and connected region is still stuck on the runway. While leaders love to preach regional integration, the cost of flying within East Africa tells a different story.
A simple return flight between Nairobi and Entebbe, for instance, can set you back up to $350—and a third of that is just taxes. Compare that to Europe or the Middle East, where people can move across borders for less than half that price. Across Africa, passengers pay double the taxes charged elsewhere, and that’s before adding the extra airport fees. Some airports, like Kinshasa, charge as much as $77.50 per passenger. For ordinary East Africans, these figures make air travel a luxury instead of a tool for connecting.
Yet, the EAC knows there is a problem. The bloc has drafted new Air Transport Market Liberalisation Regulations that could finally change things. For example, airlines would be allowed to carry passengers between two EAC countries even if neither is their home base. This could create more routes, boost competition, and hopefully lower prices.
But there’s a problem: some member states are dragging their feet. Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi, and South Sudan have not signed up for the Single African Air Transport Market (SAATM)—a wider African initiative that would open up the region’s airspace. These countries are hesitant, mainly to protect their struggling national airlines. It’s a short-sighted move that keeps regional travel expensive and unreliable.
Going beyond that particular regulation, the EAC needs to agree on regulatory fees and treat flights within the region as domestic, not international. Right now, the fees are all over the place, making tickets for some routes unnecessarily expensive. Experts say that reducing ticket prices by just 10 per cent could increase passenger numbers by 35 per cent. That’s money and jobs for the region, but only if leaders are bold enough to make it happen.
At the end of the day, if travelling from Nairobi to Kigali costs more than flying to Dubai, then EAC unity is just an imaginary slogan. Unless we open the skies and make air travel affordable for all, the dream of integration will remain just that, a dream.
For now, East Africans continue to watch the skies, wondering when the promise of unity will finally touch down.
Isaac Mwangi writes on social, political and economic issues in East Africa. E-mail: isaacmmwangi@gmail.com
