political affinity

Why Kenya Airways and South African Airways are looking to West Africa

By Nelly Fualdes

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Posted on July 22, 2022 17:05

Kenya Airways planes at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, near Nairobi, Kenya, in November 2019.
Kenya Airways planes at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, near Nairobi, Kenya, in November 2019. Thomas Mukoya/REUTERS

“We intend to invite a West African airline to join us in order to deploy a three-hub strategy: Nairobi, Johannesburg and West Africa,” Kenya Airways chairman Michael Joseph told an investor briefing on 29 March. He issued a call for applications to join the proposed merger between his airline and South African Airways (SAA), which had been presented in November 2021.

The call seems to have been heard, and even responded to beyond Joseph’s initial target. “Three West African companies have shown interest, but we have also been approached by the company of a Southern African state,” Martin Gitonga, director of network and alliances at Kenya Airways, told us, albeit expressing his surprise at such a move. It is, according to him, proof of the interest in the project that was unveiled in November 2021 with the signing of a strategic partnership framework between the two national carriers, both of them weakened and undergoing restructuring.

Although Kenya Airways is currently privately owned and 51% of SAA’s shares are about to be bought by the Takatso consortium, the process of rapprochement is conducted primarily at the state level. The November 2021 agreement was signed in the presence of Presidents Cyril Ramaphosa and Uhuru Kenyatta, who had paid an

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