The Journey Towards African Open Skies: The 1988 Yamoussoukro Declaration

Africa’s journey towards open skies did not begin in Yamoussoukro in 1988.

By the time African ministers responsible for civil aviation met in the Ivorian capital on 6 and 7 October that year, the continent had already spent decades trying to coordinate its airlines, traffic rights, training facilities, maintenance systems and aviation policies.

Air Afrique had demonstrated that several countries could pool their traffic rights and operate a multinational airline. The Lagos Plan of Action had placed transport at the centre of Africa’s economic integration. The Organisation of African Unity had endorsed a common civil aviation policy. African governments had also met in Mbabane to confront one of international aviation’s most difficult questions: which airlines should be allowed to fly where?

The importance of the 1988 Yamoussoukro Declaration, therefore, is that it gave earlier ambitions a clearer diagnosis, a detailed programme and, crucially, a deadline.

African governments committed themselves to integrating their airlines within eight years.

That deadline would pass without the promised integration. But the Declaration changed the terms of Africa’s aviation debate and established the policy path that eventually led to the 1999 Yamoussoukro Decision and the Single African Air Transport Market.

Colonial aviation networks were primarily designed to connect African territories with European capitals and administrative centres. After independence, African governments inherited air services, airports and regulatory relationships that did not necessarily connect neighbouring countries efficiently.

Many newly independent states established national airlines as instruments of sovereignty and development. A flag carrier was expected to project national identity, connect remote communities, train skilled professionals and reduce dependence on foreign airlines.

But Africa also experimented with multinational aviation.

The most important example was Air Afrique, established under the Treaty of Yaoundé in March 1961. Eleven West and Central African countries pooled resources and assigned international traffic rights to a jointly owned carrier.

Air Afrique proved that states could surrender some control over routes to build an airline with greater scale than most could have achieved individually. It became a prominent regional and long-haul operator and a symbol of post-independence cooperation.

It also exposed the difficulties of multinational ownership. Governments did not always share the same commercial priorities. Political interests affected management and route decisions. The arrangement created a powerful regional carrier, but it also restricted competition within the unified zone it served.

Air Afrique showed that African aviation integration was possible, but shared ownership did not automatically produce commercial discipline or an open market.

Other cooperative institutions were also emerging. The African Civil Aviation Commission was established in 1969 to provide a framework through which states could coordinate aviation policy and technical standards. It later became a specialised agency of the OAU.

The foundations of Yamoussoukro were already being laid.

In April 1980, African heads of state and government adopted the Lagos Plan of Action for the Economic Development of Africa, 1980–2000.

The Plan was not an aviation liberalisation agreement. It was a much broader attempt to build greater African economic self-reliance, strengthen regional institutions and work towards an African Common Market and, eventually, an African Economic Community.

Transport and communications were central to that vision. Economic integration could not be built solely through declarations about trade. Countries needed physical systems capable of moving people, goods and information between their markets.

The Lagos Plan of Action called for stronger sectoral integration in transport and communications. Its air transport programme emphasised airport modernisation, common training facilities, technical assistance and studies that could improve the integration of African air services.

Lagos supplied the political and economic framework African economies needed to become more connected, less externally dependent and more capable of supporting continental trade.

It did not, however, create a legal right for an African airline to enter another country’s market. Nor did it remove the bilateral restrictions governing routes, capacity, frequency and fares.

In 1979, the African Civil Aviation Commission adopted a Declaration of General Policy in the Field of Civil Aviation. The policy was subsequently endorsed by the OAU under Resolution CM/Res.804 (XXXV) in June 1980.

This was a substantial predecessor to Yamoussoukro.

The policy addressed training, airline cooperation, aircraft acquisition, financing, traffic rights, route development, maintenance and the coordination of fares. It envisaged a continent in which states and airlines would share expensive aviation resources rather than duplicate them within small national markets.

Among its proposals were:

The policy also recognised a problem that persists today; airlines do not operate efficiently when schedules, airports and routes are planned in isolation from one another.

It encouraged studies into a system of coordinated connections through selected African airports. In contemporary language, it was considering how hubs and feeder services could be organised to support a continental network.

International aviation is governed by sovereignty. A commercial airline cannot simply decide to fly into another country. States negotiate the routes, airlines, frequencies, capacity and commercial rights permitted between their territories, traditionally through bilateral air services agreements.

For African airlines, one of the most important issues was access to fifth-freedom rights.

A fifth-freedom right allows an airline to carry passengers or cargo between two foreign countries as part of a service connected to its home country.

This is particularly important where demand between individual African cities is too limited to sustain separate nonstop services. Combining several markets can make a route commercially viable.

But governments were often reluctant to grant these rights. A country might fear that a stronger foreign airline would carry passengers who would otherwise use its national carrier. Governments also expected reciprocal access, even when their own airlines lacked the aircraft or capacity to exercise it.

The result was a system in which the theoretical equality of states often produced practical inequality for travellers. A country could protect its airline’s rights even when that airline did not provide the service the market needed.

From 19 to 23 November 1984, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, working with the OAU and AFCAC, convened a conference in Mbabane, Swaziland — now Eswatini.

The meeting produced the Mbabane Declaration on the Freedoms of the Air. According to the UNECA compendium on African aviation integration, it was the first detailed continental examination devoted specifically to traffic rights.

Mbabane sought more flexible exchanges of those rights and encouraged the development of multilateral arrangements. It also supported cooperation in technical services, commercial operations, training and the creation of multinational or subregional airlines.

A technical committee was established to develop the work further. Its findings went to African transport and communications ministers in Kinshasa in March 1987. That meeting asked UNECA to convene a special conference of ministers responsible for civil aviation.

That chain of events led directly to Yamoussoukro.

The pressure on African aviation was not only internal.

The United States had begun deregulating its domestic airline industry in 1978. Europe adopted the first of three aviation liberalisation packages in 1987 and was working towards a single internal aviation market by 1993.

The original Yamoussoukro Declaration explicitly referred to both developments. It expressed particular concern about the effect European liberalisation could have on African airlines.

The Declaration said most African airlines were operating at a loss and consuming scarce foreign currency. Many were flying aircraft that had become obsolete and would be expensive to replace. The continental market was described as small and the industry as fragile.

Airlines were also confronting new competitive pressures in distribution. Computerised reservation systems were becoming essential to how flights were displayed and sold. African governments feared that foreign-controlled systems could favour foreign airlines or make African carriers commercially invisible.

The issue was therefore larger than whether governments should approve more routes. African policymakers were asking whether the continent’s airlines had the capital, fleets, management, distribution systems and economies of scale required to survive a changing global industry.

Their initial answer was integration.

The Declaration’s most consequential provision was a commitment by governments to integrate their airlines over eight years.

The programme contained three phases.

The first phase was scheduled to last two years, from 1989 to 1990.

Governments and airlines were expected to exchange information about aircraft, capacity, maintenance facilities and training resources. They were also expected to identify ways to use existing capacity more efficiently.

The Declaration proposed examining gateway airports into which other airlines could feed passengers. The objective was to improve aircraft utilisation and airline profitability rather than have numerous carriers duplicating routes and facilities.

The second phase was intended to run for three years, from 1991 to 1993.

Airlines were expected to begin jointly operating compatible international routes and sharing important parts of their businesses.

The proposed areas of cooperation were extensive:

This was envisaged as deep operational integration across much of the aviation value chain.

The final phase was scheduled for 1994 to 1996.

By its conclusion, governments were expected to have achieved the complete integration of participating airlines through one of three structures:

The Declaration allowed countries to organise these entities around subregions, economic groupings or other shared interests. In some cases, airlines could move to deeper integration without completing every preceding phase.

The ambition was to overcome fragmentation by sustaining dozens of isolated carriers with similar cost structures, limited fleets and overlapping political mandates. It would create larger aviation entities capable of pooling markets, capital and expertise.

Although the 1988 Declaration is often described as the beginning of African open skies, it said surprisingly little about the general liberalisation of traffic rights.

Its traffic-rights section consisted of only two short paragraphs.

The Declaration assumed that as airlines integrated, the need for countries to exchange traffic rights would gradually diminish. Countries participating in joint multinational airlines would exchange traffic rights among themselves without restriction and develop a common policy towards non-African carriers.

During the transition, governments were asked to show greater flexibility in granting fifth-freedom rights to African airlines.

The Declaration did not automatically give every eligible African airline the right to enter every participating market. It did not eliminate restrictions on capacity, frequency or airline designation.

The 1988 approach was essentially to integrate the airlines, and the traffic-rights problem will become less important because the participating states will increasingly share the same carriers.

The later approach would be to liberalise the market so eligible airlines can compete across borders whether or not national carriers have merged.

The Declaration linked fares to operating expenses.

It proposed cooperation in aircraft maintenance, fleet planning, joint purchasing, ground equipment and collective insurance as a way of lowering costs and, in turn, reducing tariffs.

It also urged states to support the African Air Tariff Conference, or AFRATC, where African airlines could study, discuss and agree fares for travel to, from and within the continent.

This reflected the economic thinking of the period. Lower fares were expected mainly through coordinated cost reduction and tariff-setting, not through unrestricted price competition.

The 1999 Yamoussoukro Decision would later move towards tariff liberalisation. But in 1988, the emphasis remained on cooperation among airlines and coordination among governments.

The Declaration extended well beyond routes and fares.

Governments undertook to improve the management and financial condition of national airlines. It called for appointments to be based on competence, greater investment in professional training and remuneration capable of retaining skilled aviation personnel.

It encouraged the use of African training institutions rather than sending personnel abroad when regional capacity was available.

Aircraft financing was another concern. Governments proposed joint aircraft purchases and the creation of an African aircraft-leasing company. They called on the African Development Bank, other multilateral lenders and African private capital to support aviation investment.

The ambition was to give smaller airlines access to modern aircraft on better financial terms while increasing the bargaining power of African buyers.

The Declaration also treated product distribution as a strategic issue. It proposed a joint African computerised reservation system and collective negotiations with existing global providers.

Long before online travel agencies and digital booking platforms, African policymakers understood that an airline could possess aircraft and traffic rights but still struggle if it lacked control over how its flights reached customers.

On aircraft noise, the ministers sought a common African position that would prevent the continent from becoming a destination for aircraft withdrawn elsewhere while recognising that immediate compliance with costly new standards could place additional pressure on African carriers.

The Declaration was therefore an industrial policy as much as an aviation agreement. It addressed how airlines would be managed, financed, equipped, maintained, marketed and eventually consolidated.

The Yamoussoukro Declaration established a follow-up process. UNECA was assigned responsibility for coordinating implementation in cooperation with the OAU, AFCAC, the African Airlines Association and other organisations.

Governments also agreed to meet during each phase to assess progress.

But the instrument remained a declaration of policy and intent. It did not contain sanctions for non-compliance. It did not establish enforceable market-access rights, binding competition rules or a dispute-settlement system through which an airline or state could compel implementation.

The 1988 Declaration was adopted at a time when most African airlines were state-owned, and governments acted as both aviation regulators and airline proprietors.

That dual role made reform difficult.

A national airline carried enormous symbolic value. It displayed the flag, represented independence and allowed a government to claim control over an industry previously dominated by colonial powers.

But a flag did not create commercial scale.

An airline could embody national sovereignty while depending on foreign aircraft, maintenance, financing, reservation systems and high-yield international passengers. It could be politically important but financially weak.

Yamoussoukro proposed exercising part of that sovereignty collectively.

Under its model, countries would combine airlines, share infrastructure, coordinate routes and negotiate with foreign aviation interests from a stronger continental or subregional position.

This was also why the Declaration was protective in some areas. It sought a common policy towards non-African carriers and resisted dependence on foreign reservation systems. It was an attempt to strengthen African participation before global competition intensified.

Implementation fell behind almost immediately.

By March 1993, African transport ministers were already expressing concern about the slow progress. In September 1994, ministers met in Mauritius to develop more detailed guidelines and accelerate implementation.

The Mauritius meeting addressed an important weakness: the original Declaration had not provided sufficiently precise rules for exchanging traffic rights. It also called for the principles of the Declaration to be incorporated into national policies and for a binding legal framework to be developed.

A later UNECA assessment found that implementation had fallen far below expectations.

Some of the information-sharing and technical cooperation envisaged in the first phase occurred. Parts of the second phase were also attempted. But the third phase, the integration of airlines through consortia, joint ownership or mergers, was effectively abandoned.

Governments continued protecting national markets. Intra-African networks did not improve as expected. Fares did not fall substantially as a result of the programme, and service quality remained uneven.

UNECA identified several causes:

The programme also relied heavily on governments directing airlines into cooperation. It did not adequately account for the conflicting interests, liabilities, labour arrangements, route priorities and political expectations that would have to be reconciled before airlines could merge.

Air Afrique had already shown both the possibility and difficulty of multinational ownership. Replicating that model across a much larger and more diverse continent required far more than ministerial agreement.

By the time the eight-year deadline expired in 1996, Africa had not created the integrated airline entities envisioned at Yamoussoukro.

The global industry was also changing faster than the policy could be implemented. Airlines were being privatised, global alliances were expanding, and governments elsewhere were reducing controls over market entry, capacity and pricing.

African policymakers were forced to reconsider the basic strategy.

If governments could not merge or deeply integrate their airlines, could they at least remove the restrictions preventing existing carriers from serving more African markets?

That question produced a decisive shift from cooperation as the primary instrument of reform to liberalisation.

African ministers returned to Yamoussoukro in November 1999 and adopted the Decision Relating to the Implementation of the Yamoussoukro Declaration Concerning the Liberalisation of Access to Air Transport Markets in Africa.

The 1999 Yamoussoukro Decision was subsequently endorsed by OAU heads of state and government in July 2000. Unlike the 1988 Declaration, it provided a binding framework for participating states under the Treaty Establishing the African Economic Community.

The Single African Air Transport Market, launched by the African Union in 2018, is intended to advance the implementation of that Decision.

The Yamoussoukro Declaration brought decades of fragmented policy work into one continental programme. It identified airline scale, management, financing, fleet renewal, maintenance, training, distribution and market access as interconnected problems. Further to that, it gave governments an eight-year timetable and forced them to consider whether national aviation ambitions could survive without continental cooperation.

Some of its proposals remain strikingly current. African airlines still debate joint purchasing, shared maintenance, common training, leasing structures, network coordination and the benefits of consolidation. Governments still struggle to balance national carriers with continental market access. The tension between protecting weaker airlines and allowing stronger ones to expand has not disappeared.

The 1988 Declaration’s greatest contribution was therefore a recognition that fragmented national aviation systems could not, on their own, deliver African integration.

Its eight-year programme failed to produce the airlines it envisioned. But that failure led to a more difficult and consequential proposition. Instead of waiting for African airlines to integrate before opening markets, Africa would have to consider opening markets so that an integrated network could emerge.

That became the unfinished promise of the 1999 Yamoussoukro Decision and the challenge now carried by the Single African Air Transport Market.