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Funding Africa's steady ascent

01 June 2012

The African aviation market has seen new lessors emerge, new airlines and more aircraft orders. Dickon Harris asks, who is financing this recent African aviation growth?

Read more: Africa African aviation

Travelling across the African continent has never been easier. Today passengers can choose between several expanding key regional carriers such as Kenya Airways or Ethiopian Airlines, two carriers which have been increasing their long-haul aircraft, or South African Airways and RwandAir. Alternatively, the price-conscious can also opt for any of the handful of Africa’s low-cost carriers, including Kenya’s Fly540, Tunisia’s Karthago Airlines and, until recently, South Africa’s troubled Velvet Sky.

As Airfinance Journal went to press a new Ivory Coast airline, Air Cote D’Ivoire, a joint venture between the Ivory Coast and Air France, announced it will start offering flights this summer.

Africa has a total of 154 pending aircraft orders with Boeing and Airbus alone. Orders for new aircraft have been coming in from a variety of different jurisdictions. Narrowbodies have been particularly in demand, with regional jets reporting strong orders as their aircraft...


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“At the current pricing it will become attractive again to issue Ex-Im-guaranteed bonds. This will help stabilize and drive pricing down from where it is now.”

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