Airbus plans to handover 110 new airplanes to African airline companies by 2040

Airbus plans to handover 110 new airplanes to African airline companies by 2040

According to the forecast of the global Airbus market (GMF) by 2040 African airline companies will need 1100 new passenger and freight airplanes. This will increase total fleet to 1440 airplanes as compared to 680 airplanes in 2019.

It represents switch to the airplanes of next generation such as A220, A320neo, A330neo and A350 that provides multiple increase of efficiency and significant reduction of carbon emissions per one passenger.

Increase of aviation activity in Africa by 2040 will be conditioned, in particular, by medium growth of the GDP by 2.8% pr year during this period. Development during the next 20 years should be based on tourism and intraregional trade.


European transnational aerospace corporation Airbus expects that the volume of air traffic in Africa ill reach level of 2019 in the period from the end of 2023 to the beginning of 2025. While cargo carriers to Africa and from Africa will increase by 2.5 times to 2040.

Such forecast is explained with the fact that fundamental drivers of the traffic demand on the African continent remain unchanged: economical growth faster than average in the world, young and growing population, urbanization and development of the middle class.

Potential of the air transport in Africa remains significant due to limited infrastructure of the ground transport, plenty of the natural resources that encourage trade and a lot of opportunities for tourism.

According to International Air Transport Association (IATA) in Africa air sector directly supports 6.2 million work places and provides 56 billion USD into regional GDP of the continent.

For the last decade in this sector on entire continent took place significant improvements including creation of The Single African Air Transport Market (SAATM) and modernization of the fleet of national airline companies.