• At AeroWest 2026, Obasanjo, others expose high cost of keeping continent disconnected
By Olakunle Olafioye
Africa has beaches. It has mountains, forests, wildlife, ancient cities, archaeological treasures, music, fashion, cuisine, festivals and a cultural history that stretches across centuries. It has more than enough stories to tell the world. What it does not have is enough affordable, efficient and seamless ways of connecting those stories to the people who want to experience them.
That was the uncomfortable truth laid bare in Lagos this week as aviation, tourism, finance and investment leaders from across Africa and beyond converged on the AeroWest 2026 Summit to confront one of the continent’s most persistent economic contradictions: a region rich in tourism assets but poor in connectivity. Held from September 2 to 4 under the theme, “Financing Connectivity: Unlocking Aviation & Tourism Growth in West & Central Africa,” the summit brought together stakeholders who occupy different corners of the aviation and tourism ecosystem but appeared united on one fundamental point.
At the summit held at Marriott Hotel, Ikeja, Lagos, stakeholders were unanimous in the opinion that Africa cannot build a serious tourism economy without fixing aviation while aviation itself cannot survive without a thriving economy, a growing middle class and a tourism industry capable of generating passengers. The official AeroWest programme similarly frames aviation and tourism as interdependent engines of economic growth, pointing to limited connectivity, high travel costs and fragmented systems as major constraints. But beneath the polished language of conferences and investment forums was a harder message.
Africa is losing money because it is disconnected. It is losing tourists because destinations are difficult to reach. It is losing investment because routes are commercially unattractive. It is losing airlines because operating costs are becoming unsustainable. It is losing jobs because tourism businesses cannot thrive without visitors. And it is losing time because governments continue to approach aviation, tourism, transport, finance and infrastructure as separate issues.
Obasanjo: Africa does not know what it has
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo, who delivered the keynote address and declared the summit open, offered perhaps the most fundamental diagnosis of the problem. Africa, he argued, does not lack resources. It lacks the capacity to understand, preserve, package and exploit what it already possesses. “We do not lack anything. We have it all. The problem is you don’t even know what you have. If you don’t know what you have, how will you be able to keep it?”
His statement goes beyond tourism. It speaks to a continent that has often watched other parts of the world transform comparatively modest attractions into highly profitable tourism products while failing to adequately preserve and market its own extraordinary heritage. Obasanjo’s argument was that tourism cannot be divorced from governance. His logic was brutally simple: “For aviation to fly, there must be passengers. For passengers to be available, there must be prosperity. For prosperity to exist, there must be a thriving economy. For a thriving economy to be there, there must be good governance.”
The region with everything — except connectivity
For Ola Wright, CEO of the West Africa Tourism Organisation (WATO), the contradiction is even more glaring. West and Central Africa possess an extraordinary combination of history, culture, nature and human creativity. According to her, Nigeria has archaeological treasures and ancient civilisations waiting to be properly researched, preserved and presented to the world. “Cross River has biodiversity capable of supporting ecotourism and adventure tourism. Sierra Leone has the Freetown Peninsula. Ghana has its castles, cultural heritage, parks and creative industries. Across the region are beaches, festivals, food, music, fashion, wildlife and landscapes capable of sustaining a formidable tourism industry. Yet many of these attractions remain inaccessible or relatively unknown.”
Wright captured the problem thus: “Our challenge is not creating attractions, but attracting people to the attractions.” That is where aviation enters the equation. The region needs tourists to move not simply from Europe, America or Asia into individual African countries, but from one African destination to another.
“Imagine a tourist landing in Lagos and continuing to Ghana, Sierra Leone, The Gambia or another West African destination. Imagine an international visitor purchasing a package that combines Nigerian culture, Ghanaian heritage, Sierra Leonean history and West African beaches. Imagine academics moving across borders to study connected archaeological and historical sites,” all these, she noted, is the market AeroWest sought to place on the table. She however concluded that this would remain a dream unless the region can make movement easier.
The $45bn opportunity
Theodore O. Chikelu, Managing Director/CEO of Jet Afrique Aviation Services, went further, putting a potential $45 billion aviation-tourism revolution at the centre of the conversation. His argument was that aviation and tourism must stop behaving like separate industries. To him, both are two sides of the same coin. West and Central Africa, with more than 20 countries and more than 500 million people, represents one of the world’s potentially significant aviation and tourism markets. Yet the region’s air links remain inadequate.
Figures presented by Chikelu showed the scale of the problem, with the region accounting for less than three per cent of global air traffic and fewer than 30 per cent of more than 400 potential city-pair routes served by direct flights. The consequences are enormous. A passenger travelling from one African country to another may have to route through a distant international hub. A tourist may need additional visas simply to transit. A business traveller can spend an entire day journeying through a distance that should require only a few hours. And an airline considering a new regional route must calculate whether the potential passenger base can justify fuel, aircraft leasing, crew, airport charges, maintenance and other operating costs. The result is a vicious cycle.
The airline is being squeezed from every side
United Nigeria Airlines Chief Commercial Officer Adedayo Olawuyi brought the debate down from the level of grand economic visions to the harsh realities of airline balance sheets with a call for an urgent review of aviation taxes and charges, warning that airlines are operating under intense pressure. The price of an airline ticket, he stressed, is not simply the result of an airline deciding to charge passengers more.
“There are taxes, airport charges, foreign exchange pressures, fuel costs, aircraft financing, leasing, training and maintenance. And there is a fundamental currency mismatch. Airlines earn much of their domestic revenue in naira while many of their most important expenses are effectively dollar-denominated. Fuel alone has become a major burden,” Olawuyi noted, adding that aviation fuel had risen from about ₦900 per litre in December 2025 to approximately ₦3,000 in 2026.
The consequences are predictable. Airlines either increase fares, reduce capacity, abandon routes or operate under severe financial pressure. None of these outcomes helps the passenger. None helps tourism. And none helps regional connectivity.
Then comes the financing problem. Olawuyi asked a question that exposes the contradiction confronting investors and operators: “Who would take a loan at about 30 per cent interest to invest in a business yielding less than five per cent profit? That is the brutal arithmetic of aviation. And without affordable financing, the industry cannot expand.
“If the goose dies, everything is lost”
Perhaps the most memorable analogy from the summit came from Olawuyi. “Airline is the goose that lays the golden egg, and everybody wants a piece of it. But at the end of the day, if the goose dies, everything is lost.”
The statement is a warning to governments and regulators that airlines cannot indefinitely absorb increasing charges while simultaneously being expected to lower fares, expand routes, renew fleets and improve services. “The airline industry is already dealing with a shortage of trained pilots. Pilot training is expensive. Simulator training is often dollar-denominated. Aircraft maintenance is another major challenge. With insufficient Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul facilities in the region, aircraft often have to be taken abroad for maintenance, draining foreign exchange and increasing costs,’ he disclosed.
Safety, meanwhile, cannot be compromised simply because the industry is under financial pressure. The challenge is therefore to reduce unnecessary costs without reducing safety standards.
The tragedy of the empty aircraft
There is another problem that policymakers must confront: not every route can sustain a large aircraft. Olawuyi pointed to the difficulty of deploying aircraft such as the Boeing 737 on thin routes where passenger numbers may be extremely low. “An aircraft flying with only a handful of passengers may be good publicity for connectivity, but it is a commercial disaster.”
Lagos says the airport is only the beginning
For Lagos State, aviation cannot be separated from the wider transportation system. Secretary to the Lagos State Government, Bimbola Salu-Hundeyin, reminded delegates at the summit that Lagos is more than an airport. It is an economic ecosystem. “No airport, airline or government can build an economy alone,” was the essence of her intervention.
She asserted that governments, airlines, investors, financiers, technology companies, transport operators, hotels, tourism businesses and creative enterprises must work together. “For Lagos, this means linking roads, rail, waterways and aviation. The state government’s transportation agenda recognises that an international visitor does not end his journey when his aircraft lands. The passenger still needs to leave the airport. He needs a hotel. He needs transportation. He may want to attend a festival, visit a cultural attraction, go shopping, explore another part of the country or connect to another African destination. If that journey is difficult, expensive or frustrating, the airport alone cannot rescue the tourism industry,”
Salu-Hundeyin therefore placed Lagos’s proposition around its strategic location, population, economic strength, entrepreneurial culture and creative energy. The city has become a major business, entertainment and cultural destination. But its real opportunity may be even bigger. Lagos can become a gateway to Africa.
The tourism economy is bigger than hotels
One of the strongest themes to emerge from the summit was that tourism should no longer be viewed simply as hotels, beaches and sightseeing. Tourism is transport. It is aviation. It is food, entertainment, fashion, culture and agriculture. Tourism is technology: it is construction, banking, small business and employment.
A tourist who visits a destination spends money across an entire economic chain. That is why Wright’s argument for greater cooperation between governments, communities, investors and businesses is so important. If Africa wants tourism to become a serious economic pillar, local communities must be part of the process. They need training. They need opportunities. They need to understand how to package local attractions. They need to know how to welcome visitors. And they need to benefit financially from tourism. Otherwise, the industry risks becoming another economic sector in which communities provide the attractions while outsiders capture the bulk of the value.
The Caribbean: an unfinished tourism bridge
AeroWest 2026 also opened an intriguing conversation about the relationship between West Africa and the Caribbean. The historical links are deep. The people, culture, food, music and heritage provide a natural foundation for tourism cooperation. The summit’s “Culture & Heritage: The Barbados–West Africa Link” explored how those connections could become commercially viable tourism corridors.
The potential is significant. This includes: heritage tourism, diaspora travel, cultural festivals, joint itineraries music and fashion and food tourism. But again, aviation remains the bridge. Shared heritage is not enough. People must be able to move between the two regions conveniently and affordably.
Open skies, closed borders
Chikelu’s intervention also raised the larger question of African integration. He pointed out that the continent cannot claim to be serious about regional integration while making it unnecessarily difficult for people to travel between neighbouring countries. He called for the acceleration of the Single African Air Transport Market, harmonisation of taxes and charges, stronger bilateral air services agreements and consideration of a single regional visa.
These reforms would not simply benefit airlines. According to Chikelu, they would benefit hotels, restaurants, tour operators, transport companies, artisans, entertainment businesses and communities. “A traveller who can move easily through several countries is more valuable to the regional tourism economy than one who is forced to remain in a single destination because cross-border movement is complicated.”
Safety cannot be the price of growth
But in the race to increase connectivity, there is one line the region cannot cross: Safety. Chikelu warned about gaps in aviation oversight, accident investigation and runway safety. He also called for improved air traffic management and a more seamless upper-airspace structure across West and Central Africa. Better coordination could reduce flight times, fuel consumption and emissions while improving operational efficiency. The objective must therefore be clear. Africa needs more connectivity, but it needs safe, efficient and sustainable connectivity.
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