Top African Civil Aviation Official visits her alma mater

Centre Director Amit Jain joined Dean Jun Yang in hosting a Adefunke Adeyemi, Secretary General of the African Civil Aviation Commission (AFCAC) at the Nanyang Business School (NBS) this month (17 Feb). Ms Adeyemi, who grew up in Nigeria obtained her MBA degree in 2014 from NBS. The two sides had wide-ranging discussion and explored complimentary areas for cooperation. This included the possibility of stitching a customised executive programme for African civil aviation officials at NBS and AFCAC officials attending the Nanyang EMBA programme as well as the Nanyang Fellows Programme. The AFCAC is a specialised agency of the African Union (AU) that is trying to liberalise civil aviation and implement the Single African Aviation Market (SAATM) agreement.

Africa is becoming one of the fastest growing aviation markets in the world. The continent has 925 airports out of which 122 are international. The African continental air transport network includes a total of 14,762 air routes. Yet, air accounts for only 0.9% of intra-Africa freight transport and intra-African tourism has, until recently, been stymied by high airfare costs and visa regimes. The implementation of SAATM could double airfreight from 2.3 to 4.5 million tonnes and boost intra-African trade and tourism. Amit Jain proposed to conduct a commissioned study on the learnings and data-points from South-East Asia as empirical evidence of the knock-on socio-economic benefit that liberal regional air transport can deliver for Africa. He also urged Ms Adeyemi to consider pursuing PhD at NBS embedding herself with the NTU-SBF Centre for African Studies.