SAATM’s logic is compelling — so why isn’t the whole continent flying under open skies already? Because opening the skies asks governments to give up short-term control for long-term gain, and several practical barriers sit in the way. Being honest about them is the best way to understand where the work on SAATM implementation still lies.

What follows is not a list of complaints. Each barrier is a distinct piece of work with a distinct owner, and separating them is the only way to judge progress sensibly — because a state can be advancing on one and stalled on another at the same time.

Protectionism: The Oldest Barrier

The oldest barrier is protectionism — the instinct to protect the national airline. Governments fear that opening a route will let a stronger competitor take traffic their own carrier depends on, so they hesitate to grant fifth-freedom rights, or sign up in principle while keeping restrictive bilateral deals alive in practice. It is the single biggest brake on the market.

The gap between signing up and opening a route is the part worth watching. Accession is a single act with immediate political credit; granting a specific fifth-freedom right is a repeated act with an identifiable domestic loser. In our view that is why an accurate reading of SAATM implementation comes from route filings and published timetables rather than from the count of participating states — the former records behaviour, the latter records intent.

The right at the centre of that resistance is explained in our guide to the freedoms of the air and the fifth freedom.

Cost: Taxes, Fees and Charges

A second barrier is cost. African air travel often carries some of the highest taxes, fees and charges in the world. Even with open routes, high charges keep fares up and suppress demand — undercutting the very affordability SAATM is meant to deliver.

This barrier deserves attention because it can defeat liberalisation without opposing it. A state can grant every traffic right SAATM asks for and still see no new services, because the charge base makes the route uneconomic at any fare passengers will pay. Charges also fall hardest on exactly the traffic liberalisation is meant to stimulate: short intra-African sectors, where a fixed per-passenger charge is a large share of a low fare, and price-sensitive leisure and small-business travel. Long-haul premium traffic absorbs the same charge almost unnoticed.

Safety Oversight and the Shared Baseline

A third is safety oversight: a single market needs a shared, trusted safety baseline, and oversight capacity varies across the continent, so strengthening and harmonising it is essential groundwork.

The logic here is mutual recognition. In a single market, one state’s certificate has to be accepted by another without re-examination, which means every authority is relying on every other authority’s work. That reliance is only rational where oversight capability is broadly comparable, so building capacity is not an obstacle placed in front of open skies — it is the precondition that makes open skies safe to grant. It is also why the eligibility test for SAATM benefits includes proper licensing and safety certification by the airline’s home authority.

The Barriers Beyond Aviation

And beyond aviation, visa requirements still make it hard for Africans to travel their own continent, restrictions on repatriating airline revenue can trap money in-country, and infrastructure must keep pace with growth.

These sit outside the transport ministry’s control, which is what makes them hard. A visa requirement suppresses demand for a route that is otherwise fully open, and it does so invisibly — the route simply underperforms. Blocked revenue repatriation is a direct commercial risk rather than a demand problem: a carrier that cannot convert and remit local ticket revenue is financing a market, not serving it, and will price for that risk or withdraw. Infrastructure is the constraint that appears last and is slowest to fix, since terminal, apron and slot capacity cannot be added within a scheduling season.

How Partners Like EASA Help

None of these is a reason to doubt SAATM; each is simply a piece of work in progress. And Africa is not tackling it alone. International partners provide funding and technical expertise, and the most established partnership is with Europe, through the European Union and its aviation safety agency, EASA.

EASA — the European Union Aviation Safety Agency — has deep experience in exactly the areas SAATM needs to strengthen: safety oversight, regulatory harmonisation, and building the institutions that make a single market trustworthy. Through EU-funded technical cooperation, EASA has supported AFCAC in operationalising SAATM and run broader programmes to improve aviation safety across Africa — strengthening national authorities and regional safety-oversight organisations. The partnership also touches on high taxes and charges and on sustainable aviation fuel.

Support, not control

The framing matters: this is support, not control. Partners provide technical assistance, funding and shared experience; SAATM remains an African Union initiative, driven by AFCAC and its member states. Europe’s own experience of building a single aviation market simply makes it a useful mentor.

There is a practical reason the European comparison is useful rather than merely flattering. Europe faced the same sequence of problems in the same order — national carriers resisting access, uneven oversight capacity, and the need for mutual recognition before liberalisation could be trusted — and had to solve institutional credibility before market opening delivered results. That is transferable experience about ordering the work, which is different from transferable regulation. AFCAC’s own account of its role as executing agency is published at afcac.org.

How to Read Progress Sensibly

Because the barriers are separable, so is progress. In our view the useful questions for anyone tracking SAATM are narrow ones: are new intra-African sectors appearing in published schedules, is charge reform being discussed alongside market access rather than separately, and is oversight capacity being built at the authorities whose certificates others must accept? Those three tell you more than any single headline figure.

The history behind the current push, and why the legal commitment long predates the programme, is set out in our article on the Yamoussoukro Decision. For the framework as a whole, see the hub piece on what SAATM is and how Africa’s single air transport market works.

Want the complete, balanced picture of where SAATM is heading? Raven’s free course SAATM: Africa’s Open Skies covers the opportunities and the challenges together, in about 35 minutes.

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