Opening the Sixth ICAO Africa (AFI) Aviation Week in Kampala recently, ICAO Secretary General Dr. Fang Liu stresses how ongoing aviation safety, security, and capacity improvements all across Africa are maximizing air transport’s role as a catalyst for socio-economic development in the region.
Drawing attention to the cooperative planning and capacity-building which ICAO and African States have been pursuing together for many years now, Dr. Liu underscores that “aviation’s benefits are first and foremost dependent on a State’s effective ICAO compliance.” She also explains that while Africa still has work ahead to bring all of its States up to the current global and regional targets established for aviation safety security and facilitation, the continent today “is the world’s fastest improving Region in terms of the Effective Implementation of ICAO Safety SARPs, largely as a result of the AFI Plan and your related activities.”
In the security and facilitation domain, Dr. Liu notes that effective and proactive regional planning and cooperation among States, industry, regional and international partners, and ICAO’s Regional Offices has delivered tremendous improvement. The significant progress recorded in security and facilitation areas is attributed to the AFI SECFAL Plan established in 2015.
She drew attention in this regard to the Voluntary National Reviews (VNRs) States submit each year to the United Nations’ High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development, highlighting how these serve “as yearly status updates on the incremental progress being made by States to achieve the Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development Goals,” and that the number of VNRs referencing aviation globally “has more than tripled from 25% in 2016, to 77% in 2018.”
“I wish to signal ICAO’s gratitude and congratulations to all of the States which have worked so hard to achieve these remarkable improvements,” she exclaims. “A great deal remains to be done in order to address AFI targets and objectives for aviation, and I strongly encourage all States to continue to work together in a coordinated and focused manner to maintain the positive momentum you’ve so far attained in the spirit of ICAO’s ‘No Country Left Behind’ initiative.”
The conclusions and recommendations resulting from the 2019 AFI Week will be of significant relevance to the global discussions that will take place at the 40th ICAO Assembly, which will take place in Montréal this September.