Africa speaks confidently about integration. We have established the African Continental Free Trade Area, declared our intention to create a single continental market and repeatedly committed ourselves to the free movement of people, goods, services and capital. Yet travelling between African countries remains unnecessarily expensive, indirect and administratively difficult. This contradiction cannot continue. Africa cannot trade effectively with itself if Africans cannot afford to reach one another. In many cases, flying between African capitals costs more than flying from Africa to Europe, the Middle East or the Americas. A traveller may even have to leave the continent and connect through a foreign airport before reaching another African country. Such journeys waste money and time and demonstrate how fragmented our transport system remains. The consequences extend beyond tourism. Traders need to meet suppliers and customers. Investors must visit potential markets. Professionals, researchers and students need affordable connections. Small businesses depend on the rapid movement of people and time-sensitive goods. When air travel is expensive or unreliable, these exchanges become more difficult. High fares are not caused by geography alone. They also reflect taxes, airport and passenger charges, expensive fuel, limited competition, restrictive bilateral air-service agreements and the slow implementation of continental commitments. Governments sometimes treat aviation as a convenient source of revenue instead of recognising it as essential economic infrastructure. The immediate tax collected from a ticket may be outweighed by the trade, investment, employment and tourism that high prices discourage. The Single African Air Transport Market was created to liberalise civil aviation and improve connectivity. Its logic is sound: more open routes should encourage competition, increase flight frequencies and make travel more affordable. But declarations do not transport passengers. Implementation requires governments to remove unnecessary restrictions, permit fair competition and resist protecting inefficient arrangements at the expense of continental integration. The AfCFTA will not succeed through tariff schedules and customs protocols alone. Goods must move, but so must the people who design, produce, finance, market and purchase them. Without affordable and reliable mobility, the continental market will remain more impressive on paper than in everyday commercial life. Reducing airfares does not mean weakening safety standards or subsidising every route indefinitely. It means reviewing excessive taxes and charges, improving airport efficiency, strengthening competition, expanding direct routes and coordinating aviation policy with trade policy. Visa reform must accompany aviation reform. An affordable ticket has limited value if the traveller still faces uncertain, costly or unnecessarily complicated entry procedures. African airlines also need conditions that allow them to grow sustainably. Cooperation, code-sharing, regional hubs and carefully designed partnerships can extend networks without every country attempting to maintain an uncompetitive flag carrier for reasons of prestige. The objective should be safe, reliable and affordable connectivity serving Africa’s broader development. This is ultimately a question of political coherence. African governments cannot call for greater intra-African trade while maintaining policies that make intra-African movement prohibitively expensive. Every tax, restriction and administrative barrier should be tested against one question: does it advance or obstruct continental integration? Africa’s economic sovereignty will not be achieved merely by signing agreements. It will be built when an entrepreneur in Kigali can reach a customer in Accra, when a manufacturer in Nairobi can meet a distributor in Dakar, and when African citizens can cross their continent without being priced out of it. Lower airfares are therefore not a concession to travellers. They are an investment in African trade, productivity and unity. If Africa genuinely wants a continental market, it must make the continent accessible to Africans.
