The African Business Aviation Association (AfBAA, Booth W43) is poised to select a new chairman, following interviews with three short-listed candidates at EBACE 2018. According to Rady Fahmy, the association’s Egyptian executive director and CEO, speaking to AIN two weeks before the show, this will be a key appointment as the new person will be tasked with setting the future direction and strategic agenda. However, the association has already come to recognize that fostering business aviation in Africa will require a different approach as it’s not dominated by jets.

AfBAA’s main event this year, the Commercial General Aviation Symposium (CGAS), will take place in Nairobi, Kenya, on November 22 and 23. “This will be the association’s first meeting focusing on flight operations in the turboprop hub of East Africa,” said an AfBAA statement. Meanwhile, AfBAA has confirmed that the next AfBAC-EXPO will take place in next year's second quarter in South Africa again, with the exact location not yet confirmed. The previous AfBAC was held at Lanseria, near Johannesburg, last November, hosted by ExecuJet at its FBO there.

Growing Locally

“We have dissected the association from top to bottom and come up with value propositions for operators and suppliers," said Fahmy. "They all care about having an African ecosystem where they can come in and do business. So after five years, it’s like we’re finding our own voice, looking at EBAA, NBAA, and MEBAA and deciding we serve a community that is very different in several ways.”

Core to this new way of viewing AfBAA is the notion that “you can only grow by growing locally,” Fahmy said. “We have asked ourselves why we have so many more companies from outside Africa than within; are we truly representative of our own region? If not, is it because we’re not speaking in the language they require?”

Here AfBAA has also come to realize that, in relation to advocacy, added Fahmy, “Many say that they want to survive first. So we need to be more pragmatic and realistic. But this will just be the start.”

For now, however, at EBACE 2018, “The highlight at the moment is the changing of the guard," he said, "to get the new chairman before we look at working groups, etcetera. This person needs to set the vision first.”

That said, safety workshops will be carrying on and will be “very important this year,” said Fahmy. Also, the membership committee has been working on updating the benefits of membership.

On the data front, which AfBAA has previously set as a priority, Fahmy told AIN, “We need to communicate to the market at some point the number of [business aviation] flights and so on. Between our members we have a lot of information, and we want to push the information that is relevant out to all our members.” He noted that those giving the data “need to trust you” and understand that they will get data back on the overall picture, that will help them. “That’s part of our communications strategy,” said Fahmy, “And the data needs to come first,” despite the challenges of even knowing the fleet makeup. “CAAs in Africa don’t have an accurate picture of their business aircraft fleets,” he said.

“Also we continue to explain that business aviation exists," in the few places in Africa that have business jets, he said. Previously AfBAA has been active locally in countries such as Ethiopia, Nigeria, and others trying to engage with local regulators and politicians, through local chapters, to explain the nature of business aviation. This will continue with Nairobi in November providing a focus on turboprops. “Instead of going there and talking jets, jets, jets we’re looking at turboprops,” he said. The last day of the event will take place at Wilson Airport, Nairobi’s general aviation field and the biggest GA concentration in Africa apart from Lanseria, and perhaps Maun, Botswana. For CGAS, AfBAA is partnering with the Aero Club of East Africa.

“The association has a duty to represent the interests of other sectors in addition to business jets," Fahmy said. Unlike West Africa, which maximizes the capabilities of longer-range jets, East Africa depends on the flexibility, versatility, and ‘off-road’ capabilities of the smaller turboprop and helicopter machines.”

AfBAA is also looking beyond into countries such as Congo, which Fahmy compared to Brazil, in terms of size and potential benefits from business aviation. “It is a country that begs for GA. It has lots of mountains and there aren’t roads and railways, but estimates put the value of the minerals there in the trillions of dollars.”

Meanwhile, Fahmy said the association is not focused on North Africa, preferring to focus on other key regions. “We didn’t put North Africa on our plan for this year and next year as we want to concentrate on places such as Kenya, South Africa, and Nigeria.” He added that AfBAA now has a “cordial agreement” with the Middle East and North Africa Business Aviation Association (MEBAA), also an IBAC member, whereby each will coordinate any events and initiatives in North Africa in cooperation with the other.