Icao meeting calls for financial assistance for poorer countries

Wealthy nations who profit
from air cargo service
to poor countries may
have to financially assist
the latter to maintain air
infrastructure, delegates
at the International Civil
Aviation Organisation
(Icao) conference in
Swaziland last week told
FTW.
“We must strengthen
our air navigation
infrastructure and ensure
that deficiencies identified
are addressed and resolved
in the shortest time
either as individual states
or collectively as subregions,”
said Geoffrey
Moshabeshi, Icao regional
director for East and
Southern Africa.
Delegates told FTW this
essentially meant financial
assistance for poor nations.
“If a relatively rich
country benefits from air
cargo service to a poorer
country – for instance,
South African companies
supplying that country
and getting goods out
– it is in South Africa’s
interest to help with the air
infrastructure. It’s all about
expanding markets and
servicing them,” said the
head of one government’s
aviation department.
This view was not
unanimous. Some delegates
told FTW that the burden
of building and maintaining
airports and navigational
systems belonged to
national governments,
though the idea of pooled
governmental resources at
a regional level was mooted
at the conference.
A poignant reminder
of the constraints poor
nations face financing
air infrastructure came
with a visit to the site of
Swaziland’s new airport.
The host country arranged
for the Icao meet to show
off the airport, which was
to have been operating long
ago, as well as a new Civil
Aviation Authority formed
this year and tasked with
overseeing the facility.
Delegates took off a half
day for a “field trip” to the
unfinished airport, where
construction was halted
last month in the wake of
Swaziland’s worsening
government financial
crisis.