Analysis of International air travel to Africa this year (January to August) by ForwardKeys, a company that predicts future travel patterns by crunching and analysing 14m booking transactions a day, reveals growth of 5.6% compared with the same period last year.
However, there is a tale of two Africas – North Africa, comprising Algeria, Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia, which has seen little growth or even a decline, and other parts of Africa, particularly East Africa, which has displayed double digit growth.
Olivier Jager, CEO, ForwardKeys, said: “Despite their weak growth, North African countries still made it into the top 10 destinations in terms of volume of traffic but they have suffered from political instability and terror activities in the region.”
In terms of market share, South Africa is the largest destination, with 13% of international air traffic; it is followed by Egypt with 9%, Morocco with 8%, Mauritius with 5%, Kenya, Algeria and Tunisia with 4%, Tanzania and Ethiopia with 3% and Nigeria with 2%.