The company has been able to plan its operations rationally based on international business practices. It is this freedom that has enabled Ethiopian Airlines to emerge as the undisputed champion of aviation in Africa and an emerging giant in the global market. This underscores the point that the state can also be a successful entrepreneur when certain fundamentals are put right.
A silent revolution is taking place in Africa’s aviation industry. For the first time ever, there is a clear and unrivalled superpower that has taken control of Africa’s skies.
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That superpower is Ethiopian Airlines. It carries more passengers (13.8 million in 2023), travels to more destinations (about 60 cities in 40 countries in Africa, and 136 cities globally), generates more revenue (US$7.02 billion in the 2023/24 fiscal year) and has the largest fleet size (154 in 2023) than any other airline in Africa. It is ranked fourth globally in terms of destinations.
Its current rivals in Africa — Kenya Airways, South African Airways, Air Maroc and EgyptAir — do not come close on most of the foregoing metrics. For instance, EgyptAir, which is second in fleet size, boasts of only 70 aircraft. Third placed Air Maroc has 51 aircraft; Kenya Airways, 34; and South African Airways, 17.
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Air Maroc serves only 24 cities in Africa, and EgyptAir, 44, but 16 of those are in Egypt. Only Kenya Airways seems to compete with Ethiopian Airlines on African destinations. It serves 56 cities in Africa, compared to Ethiopian Airlines’ 60. However, Kenya Airways has less global reach: it operates in only 14 non-African cities, which is much less than Ethiopian Airlines’ 96. In other words, those who live in Africa are much more likely to travel by Ethiopian Airlines than Kenya Airways, if they’re going to Asia, Europe, North America or Latin America.
Ethiopian Airlines is the first truly global African airline. It travels to 10 Chinese cities; eight American cities and Toronto; six Indian cities; cities in most West European countries, Russia and Poland; cities in most Middle Eastern and Asian countries; and Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Colombia in Latin America.
No other airline in aviation history has dominated Africa’s skies and penetrated non-African routes as Ethiopian Airlines. Famous airlines of yesteryears, such as Nigeria Airways, Ghana Airways and Air Afrique largely enjoyed sub-regional dominance. And no single Western airline has ever had the power that Ethiopian Airlines currently wields in shaping how Africans travel.
It’s not surprising that Ethiopian Airlines sees itself as “The New Spirit of Africa” — a phrase it currently uses as its slogan. It is playing a big role in African integration — connecting Africa internally and facilitating reasonably priced travels by Africans to other regions of the world. It has won the best African airline award consecutively in the last five years.
Indeed, many African countries are now partnering with Ethiopian Airlines, either to boost their national airlines or to revive those that have long collapsed. Ethiopian Airlines has almost a 50 per cent stake in Zambia Airways, Malawi Airlines, Air Congo and Guinea Airways, and a 27 per cent share in Asky Airlines, which was awarded the title of Best Airline in West Africa in 2023. Ethiopian Airways is in charge of Asky Airlines’ strategic and technical operations and an Ethiopian serves as the managing director of the company.
Observing Ethiopian Airlines’ Dominance At Close Range
We observed this new spirit of aviation dominance by Ethiopian Airlines during our recent trips to Southern Africa, Ethiopia and Nigeria. We used the airline eight times within a period of six weeks: Geneva-Addis; Addis-Windhoek; Cape Town-Addis; Addis-Geneva; Geneva-Addis; Addis-Abuja; Lagos-Addis; and Addis-Geneva. Many Nigerians living in Europe find it much cheaper to fly through Addis Ababa when going to Lagos or Abuja, than flying directly to those two Nigerian cities.
By choosing Ethiopian Airlines, we also sharply reduced the cost of our tickets by more than 50 per cent when we travelled to Abuja and Lagos two weeks ago. Because of the transit through Addis, we spent double the time it would have taken us to travel directly, but we were not in a hurry to get to our destination.
Many passengers are now making similar calculations. Our flight from Addis to Geneva had passengers we travelled with from Lagos going to Manchester, the final destination of the flight. The transit area at Addis airport was full of West, East and Southern Africans trying to catch connecting flights to Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
These regional movements have remarkably transformed Addis airport into a major hub or gateway for travelling into, and out of, Africa. Each of the four times we transited in Addis, we thought that the airport was located in a major global commercial city. Large numbers of transit passengers from different continents could be seen snaking through rigorous security checks as they moved to their new outbound-flights waiting areas.
Using airline booking data, James Pearson estimates that 11 million passengers transited through Addis Ababa in 2023. He reckons that seven in ten passengers that pass through Addis airport are transit passengers.
According to Pearson’s data, 10 regional markets account for two-thirds of the transit passengers: Western Europe-East Africa; Middle East-Central/West Africa; Western Europe-Southern Africa; Middle East-East Africa; Northeast Asia-Central/East Africa; Western Europe-Central/West Africa; East Africa-East Africa; East Africa-Central/West Africa; South Asia-Central/West Africa; and South Asia-Southern Africa.
Addis airport has overtaken Dubai as the biggest transit hub for long haul flights to Africa.
The Ethiopian authorities are aware of the airport’s new found status as a hub for getting into and out of Africa. Passengers go through multiple security checks: two comprehensive checks and one light check for transit passengers; and four comprehensive checks for passengers whose journey starts at Addis airport. These numerous checks could be very tedious and tiring for sleep-deprived passengers but the high level of vigilance may be unavoidable. One security lapse could have a reputational cost to the airport. The hijacking of a Boeing 767 Ethiopian Airlines plane en route to Nairobi from Addis airport in 1996 and its crash-landing in the Indian Ocean, when it ran out of fuel, killing 125 passengers, was a traumatic experience.
Isn’t the State Supposed To Be a Bad Entrepreneur?
Neoliberal, market-driven ideas dismiss the state as an institution that encourages corrupt practices and inefficient or loss-making outcomes when it owns and manages businesses that are supposed to be profitable. The heads of such businesses may be political appointees who cannot be sacked, even if they underperform, low level staff may owe their positions or recruitment to patronage, and businesses may operate under soft budget constraints and clock up persistent losses. These problems may be aggravated when the state operates within a highly polarised ethnic structure.
However, it may surprise readers to know that Ethiopian Airlines is 100 per cent state-owned. The key question is why the airline has avoided the path taken by other state-owned African airlines that have long collapsed or, like South African Airways, struggle to stay afloat. In other words, what accounts for the extraordinary success of Ethiopian Airlines in a country that is riddled with serious ethnic tensions?
Arkebe Oqubay and Taffere Tesfachew address this question in their article “Technological Learning and Catch-up in Aviation.” They trace the airline’s success to the strategic partnership with Trans World Airlines between 1946 and 1975, which helped it develop technological capabilities, business competitiveness and a corporate culture of independence. TWA was given a management contract, which allowed it to recruit the CEO, management team, pilots, technicians and finance officers from the US.
The complete Ethiopianisation of the airline in 1975 almost coincided with the overthrow of Emperor Haile Selasie, the founder of the airline, and establishment of a military, self-styled socialist government that was critical of markets. According to Oqubay and Tesfachew, the new government appointed a military general as CEO of the airline and interfered in labour relations, leading to major financial losses that almost bankrupted it.
Mengistu’s military government, or Derg, was forced to change course. The management staff flexed its muscle and caused the government to appoint, in 1980, as CEO an aviation veteran with deep knowledge of the airline, who insisted that the government should end its meddling in the internal management of the company. The new CEO demanded that the airline should operate under “international business practices.”
The new management also threatened to resign en masse when the government decided to end the airline’s commercial relationship with Boeing and force the company to buy Soviet aircraft. The government rescinded its decision after the threat. And in 1991, during the period of intense tension and uncertainty in Addis Ababa, following the overthrow of Mengistu’s military regime, the management took the bold and independent decision to protect the company’s assets by moving the airline’s operations to Nairobi.
Since 1991, all governments have respected the corporate independence of Ethiopian Airlines, which has also been shielded from the country’s debilitating ethnic politics.
The company has been able to plan its operations rationally based on international business practices. It is this freedom that has enabled Ethiopian Airlines to emerge as the undisputed champion of aviation in Africa and an emerging giant in the global market. This underscores the point that the state can also be a successful entrepreneur when certain fundamentals are put right.
Yusuf Bangura writes from Nyon, Switzerland.
