In June 2024, the Air Cote d’Ivoire first long haul route between Abidjan and Johannesburg will celebrate its second anniversary. Throughout this period, steady increases in both cargo and passenger volumes have reflected the ongoing growth in bilateral trade and investment between these two African industrial hubs – and the airline remains confident that volumes will continue along this upward trajectory.
One of the biggest West African carriers, Air Cote d’Ivoire flies four times a week from OR Tambo International Airport to Félix-Houphouët-Boigny International Airport Abidjan. During 2023, the airline flew at an 80% load factor, a percentage that has continued to climb in January to March 2024.
This translates into a consistent 1000 passengers a month, most of whom are corporate businessmen in the oil, gas, and mining sectors, according to Barba Gaoganediwe, spokesperson for Gauteng Tourism.
With Johannesburg as a key centre for business travel and networking within the African continent, he said that this bodes well for the healthy evolution of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) which is intended to accelerate the development of regional and local value chains, offering investors access to a population of 1.7 billion people and a fast-growing continental GDP.
The African continent is set to remain the second-fastest-growing region after Asia and will account for eleven of the world’s 20 fastest-growing economies in 2024, according to the latest African Development Bank Group Macroeconomic Performance and Outlook report on the continent.
Overall, real gross domestic product (GDP) growth for the continent is expected to average 3.8% and 4.2% in 2024 and 2025, respectively, which is higher than projected global averages of 2.9% and 3.2%, the report said.
In January this year, President Cyril Ramaphosa officially launched a Preferential Trade Area under the African Continental Free Trade Agreement in Durban, calling for more effort to be put into building African champions in finance, retail and telecommunications and in expanding tourism between African countries. He noted that, by adding greater value to products and diversifying trade beyond traditional commodities, Africa’s economies would grow faster and sustainably.
Key to this is increased connectivity and the improvement of travel, logistics and freight infrastructure.
Air Cote d’Ivoire’s A320neo flight, with a quick refuel stop in Kinshasa, takes under eight hours making the quickest route between the two countries. Other airlines that fly between the two cities stop in Addis Ababa and Nairobi, increasing travel time to over 12 hours.
More than just connecting two major African economic hubs the airline connects travelers to and from the capitals of 14 West African countries, five of which are listed among the top 11 African countries projected to experience strong economic performance.
The top 11 African strong performers according to this forecast include Niger (11.2%), Senegal (8.2%), Libya (7.9%), Rwanda (7.2%), Cote d’Ivoire (6.8%), Ethiopia (6.7%), Benin (6.4%), Djibouti (6.2%), Tanzania (6.1%), Togo (6%), and Uganda at 6%.
The Tuesday and Saturday flight connects travelers via Abidjan to Accra (Ghana), Abuja and Lagos (Nigeria), Cotonou (Benin), Douala and Yaoundé (Cameroun), Libreville (Gabon), Lomé (Togo), Dakar (Sénégal) and, on Monday and Thursday, to Bamako (Mali), Conakry (Guinea), Dakar, Monrovia (Liberia), Niamey (Niger),Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso).
“If you feel that a 3am flight is a bit too early, this is actually the most popular time for businesspeople who arrive at their destination at 10:55 in time for an afternoon meeting,” said Elka Banza, Sales Executive of Cote d’Ivoire Airlines’ Johannesburg office.
South African government statistics put bilateral trade between South Africa and Cote d’Ivoire at R2 billion between 2017 and 2021 – a figure that, according to Observatory of Economic Complexity (OEC), an online data visualization and distribution platform, has risen with exports from Cote d’Ivoire to South Africa having increased at an annualized rate of 8.39%, from $50.7M (approximately R 963 million) in 1995 to $446M (approximately RR8,47-billion) in 2022.
In 2022, South Africa exported $147M (about R2,79-billion) to Cote d’Ivoire. During the last 27 years, exports from South Africa to Cote d’Ivoire have increased at an annualized rate of 5.85%.
South Africa’s main exports to Côte d’Ivoire between 2016 and 2020 consisted of value-added products such as machinery, vehicles, base metals, plastics, rubber and vegetable products whilst imports from Côte d’Ivoire were also dominated by goods such as plastics, prepared foodstuffs, wood and vegetables.
Complex technology and digital transformation, which continues to impact on the commerce and industry, promise increased export opportunities between Gauteng and the d’Ivoire going forward.
“The Cote d’Ivoire route is definitely strengthening economic ties between South Africa and Côte d’Ivoire, which is the economic engine of West Africa representing 40% of the West African Economic and Monetary Union’s GDP,” Gaoganediwe added.
While business travel remains the mainstay of the route, there is enormous potential for intra-Africa tourism between West Africa and South Africa. He suggested that the tourism and hospitality sectors in both countries could benefit from building partnerships between hotels, related service providers and travel, ultimately pre-packaging travel itineraries that take care of entire holidays from start to finish.