African Development Fund, the soft loan arm of the African Development Bank (AfDB) Group, has approved a grant in the amount of $8.6 million to finance the Airspace Integration Project of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), on September 15, 2015.
The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) mandated the replacement of existing ground based air navigation aids by cost effective satellite based air navigation technology, Communication Navigation Surveillance (CNS) Air Traffic Management (ATM), to cope with the growing volume of air traffic and improve air traffic navigation safety. This new system, estimated to cost $9.42 million at this phase, is expected to facilitate rationalization of investments in infrastructure and equipment by covering large areas of air traffic services from a single control centre.
“The expected benefits of this project will be very significant both in economic and financial terms as well as aviation safety,” said Amadou Oumarou, manager of the NEPAD Division at the AfDB and Task Team Leader for the project. “The project will also be among the very first and few operational multi-country integrated airspace using satellite-based CNS/ATM.”
COMESA, which as 19 member states covering a 12 million sq.m geographical area and a population of over 389 million, has annual import bill of around $32 billion and an export bill of $82 billion.