At the recent AviaDev Africa event held in Zanzibar, a key session titled “Moving the Needle: Driving Policy Change to Improve Air Access”brought together representatives from both the tourism and aviation sectors to examine long-standing challenges and explore coordinated policy solutions.
Natalia Rosa, Tourism Project Lead for the SADC Business Council, moderated the conversation with Hafsa H. Mbamba, Tourism Delivery Manager at the Zanzibar Presidential Delivery Bureau, and Rashid Toefy, Deputy Director General for Economic Development and Tourism in the Western Cape Government. Together, they explored the policy bottlenecks, infrastructure gaps, and collaborative breakdowns that continue to hinder intra-African air connectivity; and what it might take to fix them.
Tourism and Aviation: Still on Parallel Tracks
Natalia Rosa opened the conversation with an observation
“Aviation doesn’t see itself as a tourism stakeholder and tourism doesn’t see itself as an aviation stakeholder. So we kind of WhatsApp each other, say hi once in a while, and then we don’t talk until next year’s AviaDev.”
According to her , despite tourism’s dependence on air access, and despite the clear economic case for strengthening the relationship, the two sectors continue to operate in silos. The consequences are tangible: fragmented visa regimes, inefficient route networks, and underused infrastructure.
Natalia Rosa
The Policy Gap: Everyone Knows What to Do: But Who’s Doing ?
Natalie expressed her viewpoint on the ongoing challenges
“We’ve been talking about Yamoussoukro. We’ve been talking about SAATM. I’ve been talking about it for 20 years as a former travel trade journalist. Quite frankly, I’m bored.”
According to her the bottlenecks aren’t always due to lack of knowledge. Often, they’re political, institutional, or simply the result of fragmented implementation.
Coordination, Not Just Strategy
For Hafsa Mbamba, the issue isn’t that there’s no vision. It’s that implementation continues to lag.
“I think the creation of the Presidential Delivery Bureau was the first step,” she said. “The policies are there. The challenge has always been people working in silos and actually implementing them.”
The Zanzibar Bureau has focused on coordination across key sectors: tourism, infrastructure, and transport with clear backing from the highest level of government.
Hafsa Mbamba
“We don’t work on every sector,” Mbamba explained. “There are priority sectors: tourism being one of them. And we are results-driven. We are implementing the vision, not just planning.”
That coordination, she argued, comes with real authority. “When we go to stakeholders, we are essentially representing His Excellency. So yes: we have the leverage.”
When Policy Isn’t Agile Enough
Still, Mbamba acknowledged the reality of changing conditions on the ground.
“You can have a policy and a vision, but that’s not how tourism and aviation work. Things change.”
Her approach? “Being in this position gives you a 360-degree view. It helps avoid duplication of efforts, ensures better partnerships, and keeps us focused on transformation.”
That ability to pivot, she said, has been key in responding to infrastructure demands.
“We’ve just upgraded Terminal 3, but we’re already working on Terminal 2 and Terminal 4. Terminal 1 is also being upgraded, and there’s a new international airport coming to Pemba Island.”
This, she added, is all part of a larger strategy to anticipate future demand. “We don’t want to make the same mistakes we did before.”
Bridging Policy and Practical Access
Mobility across the continent remains a persistent challenge. Flights within the SADC region are often time-consuming and costly, and the barriers: ranging from outdated bilateral agreements to restrictive visa regimes continue to deter growth.
Natalia Rosa, reflecting on her own experiences, noted that reaching destinations like The Gambia from Southern Africa could still take over a day.
“We’re still battling outdated bilaterals, eye-watering fees, complex visa processes,” she remarked, adding that visa complications for brief speaking engagements remain common even at aviation events.
The challenge isn’t a lack of vision, the panelists agreed, but how that vision is delivered.
A Model Built on Manpower
For Rashid Toefy, the Western Cape’s success story around Cape Town Air Access comes down to one word: resourcing.
“Every year since 2015, I hard-fund a team,” he said. “It’s their only job-air access. Data specialists, airline relationship managers: they wake up every morning with a single purpose.”
This long-term commitment, Toefy explained, has allowed the province to maintain relationships with airlines and present compelling economic arguments.
“For every 100 international travellers, we create two jobs. That’s the story we tell.”
And it’s not just about tourism. “Our trade and investment body and our tourism body are the same organisation,” he said. “So we don’t even locate air access under tourism: it’s under general economic growth. Because if I can get berries to Dubai in 48 hours, that’s as important as getting tourists here.”
Rashid Toefy
Collaboration Is Not a Buzzword
Rashid pushed back on the overuse of the word “collaboration.”
“Collaboration has a bit of a formula,” he said. “It takes shared vision, familiar partnerships, negotiating so both sides feel like they’re getting a good deal. It’s not a suitcase-y word. It’s a doing word .”
Hafsa backed that up with a tangible example: “This event is co-hosted by the Zanzibar Airport Authority and the Zanzibar Commission for Tourism. I don’t think these authorities have worked together at this level before. And they’ve brought in the private sector from the very beginning.”
Data, Trade and the Bigger Economic Picture
A key takeaway from the discussion was that tourism and aviation must be reframed not as standalone industries but as integral components of national economic strategies.
As Toefy put it, “Just going alone with a tourism argument is too singular… If you start talking about how trade like berries, seafood, flowers moves through air access, the case becomes stronger.”
That positioning allows regions to draw support from departments of trade, investment, and infrastructure. In the Western Cape, the air access team is housed not under tourism but within a combined trade and investment body. “We don’t even locate it under the tourism unit: it’s under a general project,” he explained. “Because really, this is about the economy.”
Shifting the Narrative
But how do you convince decision-makers to take tourism seriously? For Mbamba, it starts with reframing.
“It’s about national economic competitiveness,” she said. “Zanzibar doesn’t have its own national carrier. We rely on connectivity. So the narrative matters.”
Thanks to high-level buy-in, she added, “The changes that need to be made are being made or have already been made.”
When Rosa asked about risk: why governments might hesitate to back such a volatile sector, Toefy drew on his recent PhD research.
“There were three things that came through from the 32 global leaders I interviewed: collaboration, diversity, and sense-making. That means data. Not just intuition.”
He pointed to the recent example of Tanzania’s port deal with DP World: “They gave a 45-year lease. That’s commitment. That’s long-term thinking.”
What’s Really Holding Back Open Skies?
In a live audience poll, participants were asked to name the biggest obstacle to implementing open skies in Africa. The top response? Protectionist policies favouring national carriers: followed by political will and bureaucratic resistance.
Rosa shared her viewpoint : “I’m so sad that’s still number one. You’d think we’ve moved on from that.”
As the session closed, Toefy made a final appeal: for tourism and aviation stakeholders to aim higher.
“Air access is thought leadership. It’s a cultural exchange. It’s literally creating world peace. That’s why we need to fix the roads in Zanzibar or get more direct flightsit’s because we’re reconnecting people, creating jobs, and solving real problems.”
In other words, tourism isn’t an indulgence. It’s an engine.
And for Africa to truly move the needle on connectivity, implementation not just vision will have to take centre stage.
Watch the session here
