This month's opinion piece comes from Rady Fahmy, executive director of the African Business Aviation Association.

AfBAA offers support and assistance to enterprises, entrepreneurs, business leaders, governments and their respective civil aviation authorities in Africa. It also organises a range of conferences including AfBAC in Johannesburg, which this year takes place from 29 November to 1 December.

African business aviation continues to develop and grow as international business realises the potential for economic growth on the continent. Multinationals are exploring opportunities, African businesses are expanding beyond country borders, and the number of industry sectors is developing.

However, there are still vast tracts of land to cover, with poor land transport infrastructure. Commercial aviation is growing but the routes that can be flown are still restricted. Consequently, business aviation is growing in importance as executives realise that it is a genuine tool facilitating business.

We are seeing more international operators flying in, as well as witnessing a growth from African countries. These business jet users recognise the privacy, security, time saving, cost-efficiency, improved access to difficult locations and effective routes that business aviation brings.

Beyond corporate travel, we are seeing other forms of business aviation grow, including medevac operations. Remotely piloted aerial systems are being used for all sorts of tasks such as surveying, mapping, delivering medical supplies and supporting tourism. Within tourism itself there has been a rise in demand for sightseeing flights and shuttle services between safari destinations and principal airports.

Infrastructure

Key challenges for infrastructure remain ground services, human resources, access to training and maintenance facilities. These are all areas of focus for AfBAA. Africa is made up of 54 countries and while we have seen significant improve-ments in ground infrastructure in some countries, in others nothing has changed at all. However, there is a greater awareness now about the value of safety management systems and how to effectively use them in the countries where business aviation continues to grow, such as Angola, Nigeria and South Africa. We've seen FBOs win IS-BAH and operators win IS-BAO accreditation too, which shows the improvements being made.

The importance of training is also being recognised. Our members now continually invest significant sums in training teams, and adopt Western standards in terms of levels of service and safety. This is attractive to international travellers and is something we continue to encourage among our members through our active Safety and Training committee.

We currently have agreements in place with the Association of African Aviation Training Organizations, and the Joint Aviation Authorities Training Organisation, JAA TO. We are also working on creating a business 101 course to be delivered at Ethiopian Airlines' highly respected aviation academy. Maintenance remains a challenge but we've seen an uptick in activity from OEMs in terms of service provision, and engine manu-facturers are opening installations closer to the most active business aviation points. This is all positive.

Misconceptions

The first misconception we face is safety and that is something we are working with our members and African CAAs to improve upon. Great strides have been made in the last few years, and we continue to support and encourage our members and the industry in improving safety management systems by hosting regular workshops.

There is also a cultural miscon-ception about doing business in Africa. The level of professionalism and knowledge is extremely high and, for those looking to work in Africa, taking a local partner will add an invaluable resource to your business.

Another misconception is that Africa is not a booming economy. As a continent it is disparate but estimates from the World Bank suggest that by 2040 the population will pass the one billion mark and that this demographic could generate 11-15 per cent GDP growth between now and 2030.

The next five years?

Our continued mission is to represent the business aviation sector with a pan-African voice at the continental and international levels.

We plan to grow our membership and encourage individuals through to large corporations to share knowledge and experience to improve business aviation opportunities on the continent. We have already developed individual AfBAA Chapters in Ethiopia and Nigeria to encourage business aviation at a national level and will continue to encourage other nations to develop their own chapters to deal with their unique needs. We also plan to continue supporting sustainable develop-ment all over the continent.