By: Kebba AF Touray
The ECOWAS Parliament, through its joint committee on Infrastructure, Agriculture, the Environment, Natural Resources, Energy and Mines, has commenced a second remote five-day delocalise meeting in Lome, Togo, yesterday Tuesday, 6 May 2025, to discuss ways and strategies of addressing the high cost of air transportation within the sub-region.
The meeting is themed on: “Air Transport as a Means of Integration for West African Peoples: A Strategy for Reducing Airline Ticket Costs.”
In her opening statement, the Speaker of the ECOWAS Parliament, Rt. Hon. Hadja Mémounatou Ibrahima said this year’s theme is of paramount importance to the community, because it reflects a major issue that faces citizens of the bloc. She said the issues include the prohibitive costs of air travel between countries in the Region, and this, she said, hinders the free movement of people and compromises the ambitions for regional integration.
She justified the reason for choosing Lomé to discuss this year’s meeting, adding that in the recent past, the Commission shared its vision for Africa’s economic integration based on investments in the transport and logistics sector on 1 February 2025 in Accra, during the third edition of the Dialogue on Prosperity in Africa.
“Therefore, there is no need to emphasise the importance of air transport in a country’s economy, especially within a sub-regional community. Indeed, air transport is an essential lever for economic development and sub-regional integration,” she said.
Speaker Ibrahima continued that air transport promotes trade, stimulates tourism, strengthens cultural and social ties, and contributes to the growth of economies, adding that in reality, there can be no free movement without transport facilitation, and among these facilitations, transport cost figures prominently.
“West Africa accounts for approximately 54% of air traffic recorded in the region, with no fewer than 40 international airports, including Gnassingbé Eyadema International Airport in Lomé and Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos, which are veritable hubs in West Africa,” she said.
These airports, she noted, contribute financially to state budgets in several ways, including landing fees, air ticket taxes, security taxes, non-aviation taxes, and revenue from commercial activities at the airport. She, however, stated that it is clear that all these fees make air ticket costs prohibitive within the ECOWAS region, thus hampering a major driver of development, which is tourism. She reminded members that during the Sixty-sixth Ordinary Session of the regional parliament held last December in Abuja, in the Federal Republic of Nigeria, the Authority of Heads of States and Governments of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in its final communiqué, noted issues of critical concern in the region. These, she said, are the alarming negative impacts of the high cost of air transport on the growth of the region’s air transport industry and on ECOWAS’s economic and regional integration agenda.
“As regular users of air transport, ECOWAS parliamentarians are in a better position to attest to the high cost of air tickets in Africa in general, and in West Africa in particular, compared to other parts of the world. We must therefore examine the root causes of this situation,” she said. She said several factors may contribute to the high cost of air fares in our region, and these include excessive taxation and high airport fees.
“They also include a fragmented aviation market, with national airlines operating in isolation rather than in synergy, a lack of modern infrastructure adapted to the needs of air transport, weak implementation of agreements liberalizing African airspace, notably the Yamoussoukro Declaration,” she said.
In response to these challenges, she outlined that the Conference of Heads of States and Governments adopted several legal instruments such as the Supplementary Act on the Common Regional Policy on Aviation Fees, Taxes, and Charges, the regional strategy and Regulation establishing a Common Aviation Security Framework and increasing the compensation rate for passengers denied boarding.
“These instruments aim to reduce the cost of air transport services in the ECOWAS region and ensure an overall improvement of the air transport industry in the region,” she said, underscoring that the objective of the third pillar of ECOWAS’ Vision 2050 on “Economic Integration and Interconnectivity seeks to explore viable and sustainable solutions.
‘‘Our role is crucial in the realization of these reforms,” she said, challenging the regional lawmakers that through their work, they must formulate strong recommendations to Member States and relevant institutions to ensure the establishment of a framework that is conducive to more accessible and efficient air transportation.
On his part, Hon. Dzereke Yao, the Vice-President of the Regional Assembly, said the prohibitive cost of airfare is one of the main obstacles to citizens’ mobility within the ECOWAS region, and jeopardizes their collective efforts toward economic, social, and human integration. He said the issue of air transport in West Africa remains a major challenge for integration.
“This paradoxical situation merits our attention because our community area boasts of considerable potential in this sector, be it a population of more than 400 million, growing economies, or a dynamic and mobile youth,” he said.
He expressed that the work to be undertaken over the five days is of vital importance, and is optimistic that it will lead to solid, pragmatic, and ambitious recommendations that will enable ECOWAS to go beyond rhetoric and develop a more open and competitive airspace that is conducive to the development of West African populations.
