ECONOMY-AFRICA: Scramble for Tourists Spurs Competition for New Airports

By James Hall Reprint | | Print |

James Hall

KRUGER PARK, South Africa, Jun 13 2003 (IPS) - The new Kruger Mpumalanga International Airport boasts of having "the world’s largest thatched roof".

The claim is verified by the enormous grass ceiling supported by dark-stained wooden posts that greets holiday and business travellers arriving in northeast South Africa. But to critics of government spending priorities, such theatrical expenditures on the tourism sector are out of place in a country with great social and developmental needs.

"Let’s get our priorities straight: the dilemmas of AIDS, poverty and education have precedent over spending on tourism infrastructure," Jane Khumalo of the environmental group Green Cross Africa told IPS.

Khumalo’s agenda, to preserve Africa’s remaining pristine environments against development, puts her in conflict with any attempt to increase tourism numbers that put stress on those areas. But other developmental groups, without anti-tourism agendas, are questioning Southern African governments’ airports building plans.

"I don’t see how Swaziland’s new international airport that’s going to cost R1.8 billion (240 million U.S. dollars) is going to do anything but wreck the economy. If they had built it in the mid-1980s, when it was first proposed, it would not have had two decades to establish itself before the competing airports were built. But now other airports are running, and only now is government building the new airport here," an executive with a commuter airline serving Swaziland told IPS this week.

Airports in South Africa and Mozambique are subject to approval by parliaments in those countries that are popularly elected. Swaziland’s royal government has no such constraints. This has led to spending in the past on projects that were economically unprofitable, but which were deemed prestigious by government.

Work began this year on a new Swaziland International Airport beside the eastern lowveld hamlet of Sikhupe. Government’s hope is that the giant facility, which will replace the kingdom’s current airport that is so small that even mid-sized commercial jets cannot land there, will transform Swaziland from a secondary to a primary travel destination.

"Presently, visitors to Southern Africa go to Johannesburg International, and from that hub go to other countries. The new airport will allow Swaziland to be the hub. Users can go to nearby Kruger Park, or to the Indian Ocean resorts of Mozambique and South Africa," said Evart Madlopha, principal secretary of the Ministry of public works and Transport in Zwaziland.

However, the Kruger Mpumalanga International airport now exists to handle Kruger Park-bound visitors, who may wish to fly directly from Europe or Asia to that historic game reserve. On the Indian Ocean, the resort and commercial city of Durban, South Africa has just renovated its airport, making it larger and more attractive.

The city of Maputo is renovating Mozambique’s principal airport. Both that facility and the Durban airport are within 30 minutes flying time of the proposed Swaziland airport, making the latter investment less sustainable.

However, Marc Sveningsen, director of Express Cargo in South Africa, feels there is potential in Swaziland’s airport, though not for airfreight.

"The volume of airfreight cargo entering and leaving the country is insignificant. The airport wouldn’t work as a regional freight hub, because goods would still have to be trucked to other countries, adding time and expense, and custom’s fees. It would be faster and cheaper to fly goods directly to their destinations. But charter tourist flights have a possibility. South African Airways is blocking charter flights into Johannesburg International. They need somewhere to go. The Swaziland airport may be the answer," Sveningsen said.

Controversy surrounds the airport project because of the expense involved.

"A nation that cannot feed its people or tend to their health has no business spending money it doesn’t have on an airport," said Alice Simelane, a schoolteacher in Manzini, Swaziland’s commercial city.

Two-thirds of Swazis live in poverty. Currently, about one-third of the population is without food due to drought and land use mismanagement. A UN study released this week showed that ten percent of Swazi children suffer from chronic malnutrition. The HIV infection rate for adults is over 38 percent, signalling more social stress and poverty in future.

"But that is the point, the reason to do this project," said a government official who supports the airport. "Business opportunities have to be created. Investment in infrastructure pays off in new industries, more tourists, more hard currency, and greater tax revenues to be spent on poverty alleviation programmes," he said.

New regional airports that had hoped to sustain their operations from air freight business, and governments that had hoped to recoup their investments through air cargo revenues, are finding technological advancements in cargo haulage is frustrating their plans.

"Anything that had to be transported by air can now be transported by land and sea, with the exception of cut flowers, because they are delicate," said Sveningsen.

"Fruit that has to be rushed to market before it ripens once had to be air lifted. Now there are special cargo containers which are not only refrigerated, but the oxygen is sucked out and replaced by nitrogen, which slows the ripening process," he said.

Such containers are fitted onto trucks, and placed in ship cargo holds. Both means of transportation are cheaper than air.

But no African government seems willing to renounce its airport building plans. Kenya intends to rehabilitate its aging national airport at Nairobi. Ethiopia has just opened a glass and steel terminal at its Addis Ababa international airport. All are hoping these gateways will entice tourists and potential business investors to the opportunities to be had beyond the airport portals.

The World Markets Research Centre, in its report In Focus 2002 – Africa, notes that Southern Africa – especially South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Lesotho, Malawi, Zambia and Swaziland – "is expected to take the lion’s share of the increase in visitors. According to World Tourism Organisation (WTO) forecasts, the region could be looking at over 300 percent growth in tourist arrivals by 2020.

South Africa is the favourite choice for international tourists visiting the continent, taking over 22 percent of all international tourist arrivals to sub-Saharan Africa, according to official statistics compiled by South African government.