Open Skies and the Kigali Accord: Africa’s Tourism Test

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A traveller in Kigali can sometimes pay less to fly out of Africa than to reach a neighbouring African capital. Officials and airline executives said so in August 2026, at a working session before the Africa Mindset Reset Forum in Kigali: on some routes, added charges take almost half the fare. Open skies were meant to end exactly this.

The promise is old. African states adopted the Yamoussoukro Decision in 1999 and committed to liberalise air transport. They launched the Single African Air Transport Market (SAATM) in January 2018 to enforce it. In September 2025, ministers and civil aviation directors-general met and pledged to speed up delivery. This article calls that pledge the Kigali Accord; its formal title is the Kigali Communiqué.

The results lag the rhetoric. African airlines carried just 2.2% of global passenger traffic in 2025, according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA). Yet Africa welcomed 81 million international tourists that year, up 8% on 2024 and the fastest growth of any region, according to UN Tourism. Population tells the same story. Africa holds about 18% of the world’s people but only about 2% of its air traffic, the Atlantic Council reported in August 2026. Demand arrives; the seats, routes and affordable fares do not.

Open Skies on Paper: From Yamoussoukro to Kigali

Who carried this project matters, because a small group of states still carries it. Eleven champion states signed the Solemn Commitment in 2015, including Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. By the official launch in 2018, 23 states had committed. Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame chaired the African Union that year, which helps explain why Kigali keeps hosting the follow-up.

Why it mattered is simple. The 1999 decision stalled because many governments kept relying on bilateral air service agreements, the national deals that decide who may fly where, and how often. SAATM set out to override them. States that sign its Memorandum of Implementation commit to revise every such deal with other African states so that it complies with Yamoussoukro. SAATM also extends first-, second-, third-, fourth-, and fifth-freedom traffic rights so carriers can add stopovers, link two African capitals, and sell seats on onward legs.

Today, this means a mixed ledger. The Kigali communiqué of September 2025 counted 38 committed states, 108 new intra-African routes and wider fifth-freedom rights in 19 markets since launch. Fifth freedom lets an airline fly passengers between two foreign countries on a service that began at home. The communiqué’s nine commitments include writing Yamoussoukro into national law, removing unjustified traffic restrictions, adopting a continental framework to cut taxes and charges, funding properly, appointing regional champions at head-of-state level, and making SAATM the African Union’s Theme of the Year for 2027. Getachew Mengistie Alemayehu of the African Civil Aviation Commission put Africa’s aviation connectivity index at roughly 23% in August 2026. That score shows how much of the promise remains unspent. The signatories matter commercially: in March 2022 the African Union said the 35 states then committed to cover 89% of intra-African air transport.

Our reading is that the legal design is sound and the enforcement is weak. The tools exist; the gap lies in whether states use them.

What Open Skies Could Still Do for African Tourism

The upside is large, and the studies agree on direction if not on scale. IATA estimates that opening air markets among just 12 African countries could create 155,000 jobs and add $1.3 billion to annual GDP, The New Times reported in June 2026. The Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, drawing on continental studies, says full implementation of Yamoussoukro and SAATM could raise intra-African traffic by 51% to 141% and cut fares by up to 35%.

Country cases support the argument. Liberalising Nigeria’s air transport could lift passenger traffic by 65%, the journal reports, while Tanzania recorded nearly 17% growth in intra-African traffic after easing restrictions. Rwanda shows how the mechanism works: its visa-on-arrival policy and open-sky agreements attracted carriers and turned Kigali into a transit point for East and Central Africa.

Tourism feels the gain first, because tourists buy flights as part of a trip, not as an input to a supply chain. Only 19% of intra-African routes have direct flights, IATA reported in December 2025. The Atlantic Council adds that less than 20% of African airline traffic flies intra-African routes, against about 60% within Europe. A visitor who wants gorillas in Rwanda, beaches in Zanzibar and wine in the Cape therefore faces three separate fare problems and, too often, a connection through another continent.

Cheaper, denser routes also widen who can travel: African families, diaspora visitors and business travellers who add a weekend away. A lower fare works as a tourism subsidy that governments never have to fund. Small destinations gain most. A lodge in Zambia or a coastal town in Mozambique cannot fill a long-haul charter, but it can fill a weekly regional service if the fare is right.

Trade supplies the second engine. Kahonge said in June 2026 that growing trade among African countries would raise demand for air transport and reinforce the aims of both SAATM and the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). Traders and tourists fill the same seats, so a route that survives on cargo and business travel can carry holidaymakers at a lower fare.

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The Critique: Why Open Skies Still Fail Passengers

The first flaw is the gap between signing and doing. Thirty-eight states have committed, yet the Kigali communiqué itself concedes that incomplete domestication of the rules, infrastructure deficits, excessive taxes and unjustified market restrictions still limit the market. Maureen Kahonge, Director of Commercial and Communications at the African Airlines Association (AFRAA), acknowledged in June 2026 that implementation has run slower than expected. SAATM’s dispute mechanism has settled almost 30 bilateral disputes, Travel News reported in 2026, yet some states still use bilaterals to shield national carriers from new entrants.

The second flaw is cost. IATA reported in December 2025 that African airlines pay fuel prices 17% above the global average and taxes and charges 12% to 15% higher. The Atlantic Council traces the problem to four compounding failures: fragmented regulation, heavy taxation, trapped airline revenue and a vulnerable fuel supply chain. Blocked funds show the third: in April 2025, IATA put globally blocked airline funds at $1.28 billion, of which Africa and the Middle East held $1.1 billion.

The third flaw is dependence. Non-African airlines carried 67.1% of intercontinental traffic in the first quarter of 2026, AFRAA data show, so African tourism still relies on foreign hubs and foreign decisions. The fourth is a contradiction: states open their skies and close their borders. The 2025 Africa Visa Openness Index, produced by the African Development Bank and the African Union Commission, put the continent’s combined score at 0.445, lower than in the previous three years. It also found that four countries, including Nigeria, moved from visa on arrival to advance visas.

Finally, the accord reads as a list of intentions. As reported, its nine commitments carry no deadlines and no penalties. Arnold Kwizera of Norrsken East Africa said young business leaders are ‘far more interested in practical implementation’ than in another declaration. National carriers deserve help adjusting to competition; they do not deserve a veto over it.

The RCA Position

Recommendations: How to Make Open Skies Work

The architecture exists. The Kigali Accord needs teeth. Each answers a flaw named above, and we recommend six changes.

1. Set binding deadlines. Convert the nine Kigali commitments into dated targets, and have AFCAC publish a quarterly scorecard naming every state that misses one in plain language that airlines, tourism boards and travellers can use to hold ministers to account.
2. Cap and harmonise charges. Deliver the continental framework the communiqué promised, with ceilings on passenger taxes and airport fees and a rule that the revenue funds airports and safety oversight.
3. Pair open skies with open borders. Link route liberalisation to the ‘Africa Zone’ of visa-free or visa-on-arrival states proposed in Kigali in August 2026, so that a cheaper seat does not end at a visa queue.
4. Release trapped airline revenue. Set a published deadline for repatriating ticket income, and let AFCAC name states that breach it.
5. Back willing states first. Use the SAATM Pilot Implementation Programme to open corridors among committed states, and let blocs such as the East African Community and SADC liberalise internally while the continent catches up.
6. Measure what passengers feel. Publish route counts, frequencies and average fares each quarter. Count success in fares, not signatures.

Critics will say deadlines infringe sovereignty and that weaker carriers need time. Both points are fair, and neither justifies open-ended delay. Governments can write their own phase-in schedules; the accord should require that those schedules exist, are public and end. The original target for a single market was 2017, and the launch slipped to 2018, so a deadline without enforcement has already failed once. Transition support for national carriers belongs in the same package, paid for by charges reform rather than by closed routes.

The skies are legally open; the 38 signatory states now face a simpler test. Will they let a rival African airline add a route into their capital without first asking permission? Until the answer is yes, the Kigali Accord remains a document, and African tourism keeps paying for the difference.

We take the view that air liberalisation is now the cheapest lever African governments hold over tourism growth, because the continent already draws 81 million visitors and most of the growth still available sits on routes that regulation, taxes and visa rules keep thin and expensive. The Atlantic Council reached a similar verdict in August 2026, calling aviation reform one of the highest-return, lowest-cost interventions open to African governments.

How This Could Affect Africa’s and Nigeria’s Tourism Sector

Africa. Genuine liberalisation would reshape how the continent sells itself. Cheaper intra-African routes make multi-country itineraries practical, which favours smaller destinations that cannot yet justify a long-haul flight on their own. It also loosens the grip of foreign hubs: with non-African airlines carrying 67.1% of intercontinental traffic in the first quarter of 2026, any shift of connections to African hubs keeps more of the journey, and its revenue, on the continent. The risk is concentration. If charges stay high and only a few hub states open fully, Kigali, Addis Ababa and Nairobi will gain while neighbouring destinations stay stranded.

Nigeria. Nigeria signed the SAATM Memorandum of Implementation in 2019 and reaffirmed its commitment in June 2026, yet its tourism receipts show the cost of a closed market. The World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) estimates that international visitor spending in Nigeria fell 51.3%, from ₦947.1 billion in 2019 to ₦461 billion in 2025, and that domestic travellers now account for roughly ₦93 of every ₦100 spent. Nigerians are already a major outbound market: Ghana counted more than 176,000 Nigerian visitors in 2025, its second-largest source after the United States.

Nigerian carriers are positioning for the opening. Air Peace now serves 13 West African destinations and added Douala, Libreville, Bamako and Conakry from 1 August 2026. The contradiction sits at the border: the 2025 Africa Visa Openness Index found Nigeria had moved from visa on arrival to advance visas. We argue that Nigeria gains most by aligning its visa rules with its SAATM commitments, because an open sky cannot bring in visitors who still face an advance-visa queue. If Lagos becomes a genuine West African hub, Nigerian operators, hotels and tour companies stand to capture traffic that now routes through other continents.

Africa’s skies will not open themselves, and neither will your next trip. Read more RCA features on African air routes, visa reform and tourism policy, starting with our coverage of Etihad’s return to Nigeria and Africa’s rail renaissance.

 

FAQs

1. What is the Kigali Accord?

It is this article’s name for the Kigali Communiqué, issued in September 2025 by African transport ministers and civil aviation directors-general. It commits states to speed up the Single African Air Transport Market, including cutting taxes and charges and removing unjustified traffic restrictions.

2. What do open skies mean in Africa?

Open skies let airlines from participating states operate any route between them without limits on capacity, frequency or pricing. In Africa, the Yamoussoukro Decision of 1999 and SAATM, launched in 2018, set out that principle.

3. How many countries have joined SAATM?

The Kigali communiqué of September 2025 counted 38 African states as committed. Joining is not the same as implementing: states must also rewrite their bilateral air service agreements and domesticate the rules.

4. Will open skies make African flights cheaper?

They can, but only alongside tax and charges reform. The Georgetown Journal of International Affairs says full implementation could cut fares by up to 35%. In comparison, reported in December 2025 that African airlines face taxes and charges 12% to 15% above the global average.

5. What does this mean for Nigerian travellers and Nigeria’s tourism sector?

Nigerian airlines gain more regional routes, and travellers gain more options within Africa. Inbound tourism needs more than flights: the 2025 Africa Visa Openness Index found Nigeria had moved from visa-on-arrival to advance visas, and WTTC estimates international visitor spending fell 51.3% between 2019 and 2025.