Photos taken at Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos, Nigeria..August 2011. 

IS THERE SOMEONE IN CHARGE OF GETTING RID OF SCRAP AT THIS AIRPORT?

Africa airports need investments

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Wednesday, 07 September 2011 23:40

digg By Alawi Masare BusinessWeek Reporter Dar es Salaam. Aviation stakeholders are calling on public and private sectors to work together to improve airport operations.The initiative should include employing modern technologies to meet demands of the market. Most airports in Africa are unable to handle the increasing number of travellers and amounts of cargo volumes because their infrastructure is poor. During the 17th annual Aviation and Allied Business Leadership conference in Dar es Salaam recently, 200 participants from various countries and institutions said most airport terminals in Africa had poor infrastructure. They had ineffective safety and security systems which cause unnecessary delays in cargo handling. The stakeholders called for joint initiatives between public and private sectors in investing in infrastructure improvement.The operations director of the Astra Aviation, Mr Michael Mutahi, said improving cargo terminals, parking and lighting facilities would improve services. “There is a need for partnerships between airports and airlines for airport operators to understand the demands of cargo airlines. Our customers are surely not happy with the way the services take too long to be delivered,” said Mr Mutahi.He also added that the charges for air cargo transport were higher in Africa than in other continents. The sales director of Sita for Sub-Sahara Africa, Mr Sam Munda, said most airports in the continent had poor information and communication technologies to enable the aircraft,  personnel and passengers to be tracked. He noted that 48 per cent of the airports were still using social media like the Facebook and Twitter for communication.Sita plans to install CDM to top 50 airports in Africa by 2013. He also said that the airlines were delaying to start using services such as self-check-in-kiosks, self-boarding and self-bag drop although the basic infrastructure was available at the Julius Nyerere International Airport (JNIA) in Dar es Salaam. South Africa and Ghana are using the “self services”. “Airport authorities and airlines operators need to have collaborative decisions on the application of self and other services like smart cards and e-passports. They make the journey more secure and simpler,” said Mr Munda. “With declining prices of mobile phones, airports also need connectivity for such services. Mobility, self service and collaborative decisions are key elements of the intelligent airport.” While some aviation stakeholders call for the adoption of modern technology, others fear that replacing human labour will leave many people jobless.“We must also think of the youth employed in terminals for boarding and bag dropping to aircraft. The governments should think on how to take care of them,” cautioned the Ghanaian deputy transport minister Dzifa Attivor. Mr Kenneth Horhammer, Vaisala marketing manager, said the highest risk phases of flights were during the take-off and landing, thus much concentration was supposed to be on airport infrastructure.He advised airport authorities and the private sector in Africa to use appropriate technologies to work jointly and make serious efforts on best practices. “Most African airports are small with poor runways and no instrumental finding systems; but you should standardise the concept of small airports and organise forums for sharing best practices,” said Mr Horhammer. According to him, Africa has only 15 large airports, 440 medium-sized and 1,917 small- sized ones. He argued that the continent could do better with the small sized airports if it had seriously invested in them. This is the case because many airports globally are small.  “By the way 98 per cent of the world airports are small and medium sized.”Swissport Tanzania CEO Gaudence Temu noted that the implementation of technology employment projects at the airports was slow.  “The self services like self check-in kiosks are not fully utilised in most airports including our own JNIA except South Africa. Most airports remain outdated and today’s’ needs are growing,” said Mr Temu. He also noted that the cargo terminals were still poor.