ACCRA, March 20 (Xinhua) -- Ghanaian President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo on Tuesday urged African governments to place the aviation sector among the top priorities of their national development agenda.
He was addressing the 57th annual conference of the International Federation of Air Traffic Controllers Associations (IFATCA), the global voice of air traffic control.
The five-day conference, being held on March 19-23 in Ghana's capital Accra, provides the platform for knowledge-sharing on current global trends in the industry.
Akufo-Addo said the aviation sector was key to the realization of the African Union's Agenda 2063, recounting that at the last AU Summit in Ethiopia, the regional bloc committed itself to the Single African Air Transport Market (SAATM), which aims at improving intra-African air connectivity, and promoting regional integration, among others.
According to him, meeting technical and international safety standards is critical to the success of the SAATM, adding that the African civil aviation commission was working with its international counterpart to improve civil aviation safety and security in Africa.
"The time has come for the AU and IFATCA to pursue a new initiative for a continent-wide policy framework and mobilization of appropriate resources to enable the air navigation sector meet the projected growth of the African aviation sector," he said.
According to the 2017 figures released by the International Air Travel Association (IATA), the global air transport industry supports 62.7 million jobs worldwide.
Aviation's global economic impact amounts in value to 2.7 trillion U.S. dollars, with 3.5 percent of global GDP supported by aviation.
Everyday, 9.8 million passengers take to the air with 104,000 flights, and some 18.6 billion dollars worth of goods are carried.
IATA notes that air traffic, globally, has been growing at five percent annually, and is projected to grow at 5.6 percent per year over the next 20 years.
