The importance of former colonial patterns in Africa on the market for airline services

Passenger air transportation is the fastest growing transportation market. The model facilitates the development of important industries for many developing countries, including tourism and the production of "exotic" foods and flowers. It is also an important input into wider industrial development, including many advanced technology industries, where interpersonal contacts are an important elements of the business environment. Lack of adequate airline services can be a serious impediment to economic development. Perhaps not surprisingly, the air transportation market in Africa is one of the thinnest in the world, although forecasts by Boeing and others suggest that there is potential for growth over the next twenty years. This paper is less concerned with the aggregate growth rate of passenger traffic, but rather focuses on trends in the geographical distribution of this growth, and implicitly with matters of spatial economic integration. While standard, gravity-based spatial economic models focus on factors such as relative income levels and distances between origin-destination pairs, which are obviously important, here there is added attention to the overhanging legacy effects of the historical economic-political structure of the Continent on emerging patterns for air travel. In terms of economic theory there is little to suggest that colonization led to efficient trade patterns or maximized the development of regions. By looking at clusters of passenger flows between African countries covering 1997 to 2011 the role of colonial pasts on economic networks is examined. Of particular interest is whether patterns of passenger movements have changed over this period, and if so, if there has been a movement away from linkages between the old colonial blocks.