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<p>Major international airports in the region are either going through an uplift, have recently been refurbished or in some countries are being scrapped for new ones, a move experts think is a race for the title of regional hub. CNBC Africa&#8217;s Arnold Kwizera spoke to Bwambale Daniel, an Aviation Expert for more.</p>


Is East Africa winning the race to scale their airports to international standard?


<p>KIGALI (Reuters) &#8211; Qatar Airways has agreed to take a 60% stake in a new $1.3 billion international airport in Rwanda, the state-run Rwanda Development Board said on Twitter on Monday.</p>



<p>The board said a first phase of construction would provide facilities for 7 million passengers a year in the Bugesera district, about 25 km south east of the capital Kigali. A second phase, expected to be completed by 2032, would double capacity to 14 million passengers a year.</p>



<p>The country’s infrastructure minister Claver Gatete told a news conference that a construction company was still being sought to build the airport, and that once work starts, the first phase would take five years to complete.</p>



<p>Qatar Airways declined to immediately comment outside of normal business hours.</p>



<p>The plans for the new airport are a modification of those drawn up in 2017 for a smaller facility with a maximum capacity of 4.5 million passengers a year in the same location.</p>



<p>Company and government officials said at the time that Rwanda had signed a deal with the African division of Portuguese construction firm Mota-Engil to build an international airport at a cost of $818 million.</p>



<p>Gatete said the investment from Qatar Airways would enable it to build the larger airport.</p>



<p>“We are looking for a bigger sized airport. That’s why we are looking for a bigger investor,” he said.</p>



<p>Qatari ruler Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al Thani is currently visiting Kigali for the presentation of the International Anti-Corruption Excellence (ACE) Award.</p>



<p>Gatete said there was also a possibility that Qatar Airways would help state-run carrier RwandAir to expand, but gave no more details.</p>



<p>Reporting by Clement Uwiringiyinana; Additional reporting by Eric Knecht; Writing by George Obulutsa; Editing by Kirsten Donovan<br></p>


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Qatar Airways to take 60% stake in this East African country’s new international airport


<p>FREETOWN (Reuters) &#8211; Sierra Leone’s president opened a tender process on Wednesday for building a 7 km bridge at a cost of up to $2 billion to link Freetown to the country’s only international airport.</p>



<p>Freetown International Airport at Lungi is currently accessible only by boat or helicopter, separated from the capital by the nearly five km (three mile) wide mouth of the Rokel river.</p>



<p>“I will closely superintend the entire process and ensure that every tender is compliant and every tender is in the best long-term interest of Sierra Leone,” President Julius Maada Bio said in a Wednesday speech at State House.</p>



<p>Sierra Leone officials have previously estimated the Lungi bridge could cost anywhere between $1.3 billion and $2 billion.</p>



<p>James Turner, an official from Sierra Leone’s transportation ministry, told Reuters the project would take between four and five years to complete, and would likely be financed through a public-private partnership scheme, such as a toll gate.</p>



<p>Bio first proposed the bridge project to the state-funded Chinese firm Power China International during a visit to Beijing last September. A month later, he axed a plan of his predecessor’s to build a new $400 million airport closer to the capital with Chinese labour and loans.</p>



<p>Reporting by Cooper Inveen; Editing by Tim Cocks and David Evans </p>


Westafrica_Wikimedia

The president of this West African country has opened bids for 7 km airport bridge

<p><span class="articleLocatio&lt;/span&gt;n" style="transform: translate3d(0px, 0px, 0px);">London&#8217;s Heathrow Airport said early on Monday that there were still some disruptions to British Airways flights from the airport following a global computer system failure at the airline.</span></p>
<p>BA said on Twitter it would run a full schedule at London&#8217;s Gatwick on Monday and intended to operate a full long-haul schedule from Heathrow along with a high proportion of short-haul service.</p>
<p>The airline resumed some flights from Britain&#8217;s two biggest airports on Sunday, but hundreds of passengers were still waiting for hours at London Heathrow.</p>
<p>&#8220;We have mobilized additional Heathrow colleagues to assist passengers at the terminals and give out free water and snacks,&#8221; Heathrow said in a statement on Twitter.</p>
<p>The airport said earlier that further delays and cancellations of BA flights were expected on Sunday and told passengers not to travel to the airport unless they were rebooked on other flights.</p>
<p>BA canceled all its flights from Heathrow, Europe&#8217;s busiest airport, and Gatwick on Saturday after a power supply problem disrupted its flight operations worldwide and also hit its call centers and website.</p>
<p>(Reporting by Ismail Shakil in Bengaluru; Editing by Peter Cooney)</p>


Britain’s Heathrow says BA still experiencing some disruptions

<p>South African taxi drivers on Friday blocked roads to Johannesburg&#8217;s airport, holding up thousands of travellers in the latest protest against ride-hailing app Uber.<span id="midArticle_byline"></span></p>
<p>Uber Technologies Inc&#8217;s service has triggered protests by taxi drivers from London to Hungary and New Delhi as it upends traditional business models that require professional drivers to pay steep licensing fees to drive cabs.</p>
<p>Hundreds of drivers blocked the main highway to Africa&#8217;s busiest airport, O.R. Tambo International, causing long traffic jams on Friday.</p>
<p>&#8220;Uber is illegal,&#8221; Reuben Mzayiya, a spokesman for the metered taxi business in Gauteng province, told broadcaster 702 Talk Radio.</p>
<p>&#8220;If you want to operate, you must register with the department of transport and fulfil all the requirements. Uber doesn&#8217;t do all those things.&#8221;</p>
<p>He added, &#8220;It just operates a parallel structure with a fraction of what we are charging.&#8221;</p>
<p>The protests have prompted the South African imports operator, ACSA, to begin talks with airlines about possiblee flight delays, spokeswoman Refentse Shinners said.</p>
<p>&#8220;We are currently negotiating with our airline partners to see how we can accommodate them,&#8221; Shinners said. &#8220;We cannot as yet make any guarantees in terms of those arrangements.&#8221;</p>
<p>Uber has attracted more than 500,000 users and 4,000 drivers across South Africa since its 2013 launch.</p>
<p>(Reporting by Tiisetso Motsoeneng; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)</p>
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South Africa’s taxis block roads to main airport in Uber protest

<p>Nigeria will open up its government-owned airports to private investment, the minister of aviation said on Monday, as the capital&#8217;s airport prepares to close for repairs after years of neglect.<span id="midArticle_byline"></span></p>
<p>All government-owned airports will be offered to investors who have &#8220;the wherewithal, the know-how, the technology, the capacity, the ability, the finance to put up huge fantastic edifices as airports with everything including hotels, just the way you see them abroad,&#8221; said Hadi Sirika, Nigeria&#8217;s aviation minister, at a news conference in the capital of Abuja.</p>
<p>Sirika did not specify when the government airports would be opened to investment, or provide any other details.</p>
<p>Abuja&#8217;s airport is set to close for six weeks for repairs on the runway, after it had become so damaged that international carriers were pulling their services or warning they may soon have to.</p>
<p>Two days before the repairs begin, workers were still needing to fit electrics, seating and toilets to a new terminal at Kaduna, which will handle the capital&#8217;s air traffic but lacks capacity.</p>
<p>(Reporting by Camillus Eboh; Writing by Paul Carsten; Editing by Hugh Lawson)</p>
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Nigeria to open up government airports to private investment

<p>Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo, a U.S.-educated former prime minister, was sworn in as Somalia&#8217;s new president on Wednesday after lawmakers gave him an unassailable lead in the second round of an election in Mogadishu&#8217;s secure airport compound.</p>
<p>Celebratory gunfire erupted across the city at his victory. Outgoing President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud conceded defeat as it became clear he could not win a third round.</p>
<p>&#8220;This is a victory for Somalia and the Somalis,&#8221; Farmajo told lawmakers who had gathered in a hall behind the airport&#8217;s blast walls to vote. He was sworn in moments earlier.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>(Reporting by Abdi Sheikh; Writing by Edmund Blair; editing by John Stonestreet)﻿</p>
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Former PM Farmajo wins Somalia&#39;s presidential vote

<p>Somali lawmakers gathered behind the blast walls of the capital&#8217;s airport on Wednesday to elect their president, after months of delays and threats from Islamist insurgents bent on derailing the process.</p>
<p>The protracted vote began with 14,000 elders and prominent regional figures choosing 275 members of parliament and 54 senators, who in turn now choose whether to back President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud for a second term or one of 21 rivals.</p>
<p>The presidential vote, which was originally slated for August, is likely to take several rounds before a winner is declared. Live television images showed legislators in a hall preparing for the election.</p>
<p>President Mohamud, who has led the country since 2012 as it tries to rebuild after more than two decades of war and chaos, has the support of about a third of lawmakers, experts say, giving him an edge but not a guarantee of victory.</p>
<p>The threat from Islamist al Shabaab rebels, who regularly launch attacks in Mogadishu and elsewhere, meant the government and its Western backers scrapped a plan to give each adult a vote due to the challenge of securing polling stations.</p>
<p>&#8220;We have tightened security and have confidence the new lawmakers will elect or re-elect a candidate they believe can save Somalia,&#8221; Major Hussein Nur, a police officer, said.</p>
<p>Several blasts, probably from mortar bombs, echoed across the seaside capital Mogadishu late on Tuesday. But there were no reports of casualties in the city, which had been subject to a security lock-down in the build up to the vote.</p>
<p>Earlier on Wednesday, gunmen stormed a hotel in the semi-autonomous Puntland region, further north up the coast, killing four guards. Al Shabaab denied it had a role.</p>
<p>Rival presidential candidates have accused each other of buying the loyalty of lawmakers, drawing furious denials. Anti-corruption group Marqaati says tens of thousands of dollars have been handed to individuals to secure support in the vote.</p>
<p>Western donors, who have often criticised President Mohamud&#8217;s government for corruption, say the vote is far from perfect but say it marks a modest step forward from 2012 when just 135 elders picked the lawmakers, who chose the president.</p>
<p>The airport, where the vote is taking place, is guarded by the African Union peacekeeping force AMISOM and is surrounded by high concrete barriers to protect it from attack. U.N. agencies and foreign embassies are located in the compound.</p>
<p>Al Shabaab, which had ruled Somalia for several years, has been slowly driven out of its major strongholds in a campaign by AMISOM and Somali troops. But its fighters continue to launch regular gun and bomb attacks in their bid to topple the government and impose their strict interpretation of Islam.﻿</p>
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Somali lawmakers gather to vote for president

<p>A new terminal at northern Nigeria&#8217;s Kaduna airport is still under construction with cables hanging from ceilings less than two months before it is due to become an aviation hub when the capital&#8217;s airport closes temporarily for runway repairs.</p>
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<p>Nigeria plans to shut Abuja airport for six weeks from March 8 to repair its runway and divert flights to Kaduna, an airport used primarily for domestic flights about 160 km (100 miles) to the north, after airlines threatened to stop flying to the capital.</p>
<p>Abuja-bound passengers will have to fly to Kaduna and travel in buses, guarded by security, on a road where kidnappings have taken place in the past few years.</p>
<p>Kaduna airport handled 12 flights in December 2015, the last month for which Nigeria&#8217;s airports authority has figures, compared with 812 that used Abuja.</p>
<p>The government hopes international carriers will use Kaduna during the closure but the new terminal, in the works for about four years, was still a building site when a Reuters team visited the airport on Jan. 10.</p>
<p>Bricks were stacked throughout what will be the lounges, cables hung from the ceiling and mounds of sand were dotted across the ground. Most of the workers, who numbered around 30, were sat idle outside.</p>
<p>&#8220;We will try and fast track the contractor to deliver the terminal building before the end of February so that we can take it over in March,&#8221; Aviation Minister Hadi Sirika told a forum of businesses and aviation industry figures this month.</p>
<p>&#8220;Whether that happens or not, we have an alternative,&#8221; he said, explaining that the existing terminal would be used.</p>
<p>Sirika said the building could handle up to 500 passengers, although a visual assessment by the Reuters team suggested the capacity may be far lower. The check-in desks have no computers and there is only one security checkpoint.</p>
<p>Airport officials, who did not want to be named, said modifications could be made to the building such as creating an extra entrance, covered by a canopy, to ease the flow of people.</p>
<p>An Aviation Ministry spokesman did not to respond to emailed questions on Monday about details of the contingency plan if the terminal is not finished on time and the size of its capacity.</p>
<p>&#8220;If the government says it will be ready, it will be ready,&#8221; Mohammed Joji, chairman of a government-appointed committee that is overseeing the temporary airport closure and transition, said last week.</p>
<p>The temporary closure of Abuja&#8217;s airport has been criticised by aviation labour unions, business leaders and diplomats.</p>
<p>&#8220;Some businesses will fold up and be unable to recover,&#8221; said three Nigerian aviation unions in an open letter, adding that the country&#8217;s aviation industry &#8220;will lose colossal sums of money&#8221;.﻿</p>
<p> </p>


Nigeria&#39;s Kaduna airport terminal still building site ahead of air hub switch

<p>A plane from Somalia landed on its belly and veered off the runway at Nairobi&#8217;s international airport on Sunday, causing no casualties but prompting the authorities to temporarily close the runway.</p>
<p>Kenya Airports Authority said on Twitter that the plane had four people on board when it made the emergency landing at 4.55 p.m. (1355 GMT) at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport.</p>
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<p>&#8220;As a result the runway is temporarily closed to evacuate aircraft,&#8221; the authority said, without giving any details about the flight or type of plane.</p>
<p>It was not immediately clear when flights would resume. Officials said flights were being diverted to other airports, a Reuters witness reported nearly four hours after the incident.﻿</p>
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Nairobi airport closed temporarily after emergency landing

<p>Rwanda has signed a deal with the African division of Portuguese construction firm Mota-Engil to build an international airport at a cost of $818 million, the company and government officials said.</p>
<p>They said the first phase of the airport, which is part of a push to attract more tourists and boost Rwanda as a conference destination, would cost $418 million and is expected to start in June next year and be completed by December 2018.</p>
<p>Rwanda&#8217;s plans for the new Bugesera International Airport date back to 2011 when it first announced it was seeking bids from the private sector to design, build, finance, maintain and operate the airport through a 25-year concession.</p>
<p>&#8220;The first phase is for 1.7 million passengers (per year) capacity and it gets all infrastructure associated for $418 million,&#8221; Mota-Engil Africa Chief Executive Officer Manuel Antonio Mota told reporters late on Thursday after signing an agreement with government officials.</p>
<p>Rwanda said in a statement that Mota-Engil would operate the airport for 25 years, with an option to extend another 15 years.</p>
<p>When it first sought bids, the government said the first phase would involve building passenger and cargo terminals and a 4.2 km runway to handle large commercial airplanes, while the second phase would be for a second runway and more terminals.</p>
<p>Mota-Engil said the second phase costing $400 million was expected to raise the airport&#8217;s handling capacity to 4.5 million passengers per year.</p>
<p>Neither Mota-Engil nor the government said when the second phase would start.</p>
<p>The existing international airport in the capital Kigali has an annual capacity of 1.6 million, according to the Rwanda Civil Aviation Authority, though it has little scope for expansion.</p>
<p>&#8220;Bugesera International Airport is coming in at the time when it is badly needed because we all know that the current airport capacity is not matching the growth of our traffic in terms of aircrafts, in terms of passengers,&#8221; James Musoni, Rwanda&#8217;s minister for infrastructure, said.</p>
<p>The coffee and tea producing country expects its economy to grow 6 percent this year and 2017 and then 6.5 percent in 2018.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>(Editing by George Obulutsa and David Clarke)﻿</p>
<p> </p>


airport

Is East Africa winning the race to scale their airports to international standard?

Qatar Airways to take 60% stake in this East African country’s new international airport

The president of this West African country has opened bids for 7 km airport bridge

Britain’s Heathrow says BA still experiencing some disruptions

South Africa’s taxis block roads to main airport in Uber protest

Nigeria to open up government airports to private investment

Former PM Farmajo wins Somalia's presidential vote

Somali lawmakers gather to vote for president

Nigeria's Kaduna airport terminal still building site ahead of air hub switch

Nairobi airport closed temporarily after emergency landing

Rwanda signs $818 mn deal for new international airport

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airport

Is East Africa winning the race to scale their airports to international standard?

Qatar Airways to take 60% stake in this East African country’s new international airport

The president of this West African country has opened bids for 7 km airport bridge

Britain’s Heathrow says BA still experiencing some disruptions

South Africa’s taxis block roads to main airport in Uber protest

Nigeria to open up government airports to private investment

Former PM Farmajo wins Somalia's presidential vote

Somali lawmakers gather to vote for president

Nigeria's Kaduna airport terminal still building site ahead of air hub switch

Nairobi airport closed temporarily after emergency landing

Rwanda signs $818 mn deal for new international airport

News Tips

Advertise With Us

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