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COVID-19 Protocols: 21 airports in Africa declared safe by ACI Twenty one (21) airports in Africa have received the prestigious Airports Council International (ACI) Airport Health Accreditation Certificate. This is in recognition of the implementation of the recommended health measures in the ACI Aviation Business Restart and Recovery Guidelines and the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) Council Aviation Recovery Task Force Recommendations, along with industry best practices by the 21 airports. The ACI Airport Health Accreditation programme enables airports to demonstrate to passengers, staff, regulators and governments that they are prioritising health and safety in a measurable, established manner. It also allows airports to validate their own measures throughout their facilities and processes and reassures the travelling public using the airport’s facilities. The guidelines addresses elements like cleaning, disinfection, hygiene, physical distancing, arrival health protocols and a host of others.
Passenger Demand Recovery Grinds to a Halt in November
Ferran takes over as IAG chairman PAGE 02
The recovery in passenger demand, which had been slowing since the Northern hemisphere’s summer travel season, came to a halt in November 2020, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) has announced Total demand (measured in revenue passenger kilometers or RPKs) was down 70.3% compared to November 2019, virtually unchanged from the 70.6% year-to-year decline recorded in October. November capacity was PAGE 02
Benin signs $1.2 Million deal with World Bank and UNWTO to boost tourism PAGE 04
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Ferran takes over as IAG chairman International Airlines Group has confirmed that Antonio Vazquez has retired as a director of the company and chairman of the board. As previously announced, Javier Ferran has succeeded him as chairman. Ferran said: “Antonio was instrumental in the creation and development of IAG and has led the board with integrity and rigour since the group’s formation in January 2011. “He has made a huge contribution to IAG and, previously, in his role as president of Iberia. “On behalf of the board, I’d like to thank Antonio for his commitment
and support and wish him well in the future.” IAG is the parent company to airlines including British Airways, Iberia, Aer Lingus and Vueling. Vazquez said: “It’s been a great honour to lead IAG’s board. “I would like to thank my board colleagues for their confidence and support, and the IAG management and staff for their great contribution every day as they build our group. “I’m convinced that, under the leadership of Javier Ferran and Luis Gallego, IAG will continue developing sustainably, while adhering to corporate governance best practice.”
Passenger Demand Recovery Grinds to a Halt in November 58.6% below previous year levels and load factor fell 23.0 percentage points to 58.0%, which was a record low for the month. International passenger demand in November was 88.3% below November 2019, slightly worse than the 87.6% yearto-year decline recorded in October. Capacity fell 77.4% below previous year levels, and load factor dropped 38.7 percentage points to 41.5%. Europe was the main driver of the weakness as new lockdowns weighed on travel demand. Recovery in domestic demand, which had been the relative bright spot, also stalled, with November domestic traffic down 41.0% compared to the prior year (it stood at 41.1% below the previous year’s level in October). Capacity was 27.1% down on 2019 levels and the load factor dropped 15.7 percentage points to 66.6%. “The already tepid recovery in air travel demand came to a full stop in November. That’s because governments responded to new outbreaks with even more severe travel restrictions and quarantine measures. This is clearly inefficient. Such measures increase hardship for millions. Vaccines offer the long-term solution. In the meantime, testing is the best way that we see to stop the spread of the virus and start the economic recovery. How much more anguish do people need to go through—job losses, mental stress— before governments will understand that?” said Alexandre de Juniac, IATA’s Director General and CEO. International Passenger Markets Asia-Pacific airlines’ November traffic plunged 95.0% compared to the yearago period, which was barely changed from the 95.3% decline in October. The region continued to suffer from
the steepest traffic declines for a fifth consecutive month. Capacity dropped 87.4% and load factor sank 48.4 percentage points to 31.6%, the lowest among regions. European carriers saw an 87.0% decline in traffic in November versus a year ago, worsened from an 83% decline in October. Capacity withered 76.5% and load factor fell by 37.4 percentage points to 46.6%. Middle Eastern airlines’ demand plummeted 86.0% in November yearto-year, which was improved from an 86.9% demand drop in October. Capacity fell 71.0%, and load factor declined 37.9 percentage points to 35.3%. North American carriers had an 83.0% traffic drop in November, versus an 87.8% decline in October. Capacity dived 66.1%, and load factor dropped 40.5 percentage points to 40.8%. Latin American airlines experienced a 78.6% demand drop in November, compared to the same month last year, improved from an 86.1% decline in October year-to-year. This was the strongest improvement of any region. Routes to/ from Central America were the most resilient as governments reduced travel restrictions—especially quarantine requirements. November capacity was 72.0% down and load factor dropped 19.5 percentage points to 62.7%, highest by far among the regions, for a second consecutive month. African airlines’ traffic sank 76.7% in November, little changed from a 77.2% drop in October, but the best performance among the regions. Capacity contracted 63.7%, and load factor fell 25.2 percentage points to 45.2%.
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COVID-19 Protocols: 21 airports in Africa declared safe by ACI Some major airports on the list are: the Kotoka International Airport in Ghana; Sal Amilcar Cabral International airport in Cape Verde; Sharm El-Sheikh International Airport in Egypt; and other airports in South Africa, Rwanda, Mauritius, Madagascar, Morocco, Niger, Senegal and Tunisia. The Managing Director of the Ghana Airports Company Limited (GACL), Mr. Yaw Kwakwa, noted that: “We are extremely grateful to ACI for the Airport Health Accreditation Certificate. As Managers and operators of Kotoka International Airport, our topmost priority is to put in place measures that will ensure a smooth and seamless facilitation process at our airports. “We are deeply committed, with the support of government, to contributing our quota towards the fight against the spread of COVID-19. This accreditation will undoubtedly spur us on to continue on this good path of success.” The accreditation will be valid for one calendar year during which
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airports are expected to complete ongoing self-assessment and quality assurance, leading to a cycle of continuous improvement, as situations change, and requirements evolve. The ACI may perform a further review during the year to monitor continuing adherence to best practice. At the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic in March, the government closed the country’s land, sea and air borders as part of a raft of measure to help contain the spread of the respiratory disease. The Kotoka International Airport was re-opened for scheduled international flight operations on September 1, 2020 with strict COVID-19 protocols in place. Social distance signs, mounting of protective screens on all checkin counters and customer service desks, and the setting up of a laboratory at upper arrival to test all in-coming passengers were crucial measures instituted to ensure the safety of all users of the facility.
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Benin signs $1.2 Million deal with World Bank and UNWTO to boost tourism The Government of the Republic of Benin through the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Arts, the World Bank and World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) have signed a 1.2 million agreement to help build the capacity of Benin’s tourism sector in the area of statistics and data. In a virtual signing ceremony to announce the agreement, the Secretary General of UNWTO Zurab Pololikashvili and the Minister of Tourism, Arts and Culture JeanMichel Abimbola, were optimistic the project will help develop the tourism sector in Benin. The project will specifically enable the West African country’s tourism sector develop a system for granting licenses and classification of tourism establishments and Tourism statistics and TSA. The agreement is a major testimony of the importance of the tourism sector in the national development agenda of Benin
especially in the current context triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic which has hit hard the travel and tourism sector. The projects will be financed through a World Bank (WB) fund and implemented by UNWTO. Activities are foreseen to be implemented both through a combination of technical assistance combined with
missions on the ground as and when possible. This project aims to support the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Arts to update the system for granting licenses and classification of tourism establishments. The Project will include the following activities: Review and draft new texts of
licenses for tourism trades and activities. Update the hotel classification system (the classification system and the classification criteria). Develop IT platforms to facilitate the governance (i.e. all administrative procedures) of the licensing and hotel classification processes through a single window.
Tanzania: NCAA Drafts Bright Roadmap for Ngorongoro Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority (NCAA) is lining up a number of strategies to realize a sharp increase in income. Senior officials with NCAA confirmed yesterday at Olduvai Gorge that plans are afoot to attract investors and have more tourists stay longer in the area. NCAA Head of Planning and Investment, Senior Assistant Commissioner Needpeace Wambuya said yesterday the Authority has identified several strategic areas and invite domestic and foreign investors to tap the opportunity. If both meet the required requirements, locals will be prioritized. Private sector has highly been welcomed to invest in the world renowned crater and unbroken caldera. Public institutions are also invited to boost investment. Already frameworks have been designed under the General Management Plan (GMP) but with strict caution on environmental conservation and wildlife protection. Commissioner Wambuya said that
return for investment in NCA is assured given the international status of the geopark. Areas to be invested in include hotels and lodges; semi-permanent camps, seasonal camps, mobile camps and picnic sites.
Specific geographical areas for investment include Alkarian Gorge, Lemuta Hills, Olgoo Mountains and Kakesio. “If all these are well addressed and opportunities tapped, it means more persons will invest, leading to many
tourists coming, staying longer within Ngorongoro and earn individuals and government substantial income,” said Mr Wambuya. Source: Voyagesafriq
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The Jobs of Tomorrow By Saadia Zahidi
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he World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2020 comes at a crucial juncture for the world of work. The report, now in its third edition, maps the jobs and skills of the future, tracking the pace of change based on surveys of business leaders and human resource strategists from around the world. This year, we aim to shed light on the effect of pandemic-related disruptions placed in the broader context of longer-term technology trends. Here are the five things you need to know from our findings. The workforce is automating faster than expected, displacing 85 million jobs in the next five years. Automation, in tandem with the COVID-19 recession, is creating a “double-disruption” scenario for workers. Companies’ adoption of technology will transform tasks, jobs, and skills by 2025. Some 43 percent of businesses surveyed indicate that they are set to reduce their workforce because of technology integration, 41 percent plan to expand their use of
contractors for task-specialized work, and 34 percent plan to expand their workforce as a result of technology integration. Five years from now, employers will divide work between humans and machines roughly equally. The robot revolution will create 97 million new jobs. As the economy and job markets evolve, new roles will emerge across the care economy in technology fields (such as artificial intelligence—AI) and in content creation careers (such as social media management and content writing). The emerging professions reflect the greater demand for green economy jobs; roles at the forefront of the data and AI economy; and new roles in engineering, cloud computing, and product development. The up-andcoming jobs highlight the continuing importance of human interaction in the new economy through roles in the care economy; in marketing, sales, and content production; and in roles that depend on the ability to work with different types of people from different backgrounds.
In 2025, analytical thinking, creativity, and flexibility will be among the most sought-after skills. Employers see critical thinking, analysis, and problem solving as growing in importance in the coming years, although these have consistently been cited in previous editions of the survey. Newly emerging this year are skills in selfmanagement, such as active learning, resilience, stress tolerance, and flexibility. The data available through metrics partnerships with LinkedIn and Coursera allowed us to track with unprecedented granularity the types of specialized skills needed for the jobs of tomorrow. The most competitive businesses will focus on upgrading their workers’ skills. For workers set to remain in their roles over the next five years, nearly half will need retraining for their core skills. The survey also found that the public sector needs to provide stronger support for reskilling and upskilling of at-risk or displaced workers. Currently, only 21 percent of businesses report being able to
make use of public funds to support their employees through retraining initiatives. The public sector must provide incentives for investment in the markets and jobs of tomorrow, offer stronger safety nets for displaced workers during job transitions, and tackle long-delayed improvements of education and training systems. Remote work is here to stay. Some 84 percent of employers are set to rapidly digitalize work processes, including a significant expansion of remote working. Employers say there is the potential to move 44 percent of their workforce to operate remotely. However, 78 percent of business leaders expect some negative impact on worker productivity, and many businesses are taking steps to help their employees adapt.
Sadia Zahidi is a managing director at the World Economic Forum and head of the Forum’s Center for the New Economy and Society. This article first appeared in Finance & Development magazine.
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A fairer way to help developing economies decarbonize By Kenneth Rogoff
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ith US President-elect Joe Biden’s incoming administration promising a fresh, rational approach to climate change, now is an ideal time to make the case for a World Carbon Bank that would transfer and coordinate aid and technical assistance to help developing countries decarbonize. The proposed Green New Deal in the United States and the European Commission’s European Green Deal have laudable environmental goals but are too inward-looking. When an entire building is burning, to concentrate firefighting resources on one floor would only delay, not prevent, its destruction. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), almost all the net growth in carbon dioxide emissions over the next two decades will come from emerging markets. Although China recently pledged to achieve zero net emissions by 2060, it is sobering to consider that it accounts for half of the world’s coal output and half of its coal consumption. India, too, is highly dependent on its plentiful coal reserves, and will likely remain so despite strong advances in solar power. For all the fanfare accompanying the 2015 Paris climate agreement, the share of clean energy in global energy investment is still only around 34%, almost exactly the level five years ago. Wind and solar account for only 8% of global energy. The IEA estimates that allowing existing power plants to operate for the remainder of their expected lifespans in their current form would by itself cause global temperatures to rise by 1.7 degrees Celsius relative to pre-industrial levels. Right now, the most widely discussed approach to encouraging developing economies to cut their CO2 emissions is a carbon border tax on imports from countries without adequate carbon-pricing systems. The European Union is currently considering such a measure, and the Climate Leadership Council (whose members include incoming US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen) also has advocated it. Economists almost universally favor carbon taxes (Europe’s carbonpricing system is a clumsier version) so that producers and consumers
take account of how their actions affect the global commons. A bordertax adjustment is aimed at prodding developing economies to introduce their own carbon taxes. The policy is conceptually sound, but is too static and difficult to implement. For starters, developing economies have neither the resources nor the technology to transform themselves overnight. Part of the reason advanced economies have been able to mitigate their CO2 emissions is that global manufacturing has migrated to emerging markets that have invested heavily in energy. The average age of coal plants in Asia is 12 years, compared to 43 years in advanced economies. Given that the lifespan of a coal plant is about 50 years, and coal is one of the few natural resources that China and India possess in abundance, the cost to developing Asia of decommissioning its coal plants is huge. And then there is Africa, where the number of people lacking access to electricity has risen during the COVID-19 pandemic, to almost 600 million. The gap between the developing world’s ability to deal with climate change and the ambitious plans being discussed in advanced economies is just another example of the huge disparity in wealth and resources between the Global North and the Global South. In
response to the COVID-19 crisis, for example, advanced economies marshaled fiscal and credit support in 2020 averaging over 16% of GDP, compared to 6% in emerging markets and 2% in developing economies, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). And this wide gap does not take into account the potential for pandemic-related debt build-ups to morph into a full-blown developing-country debt crisis over the next couple of years, making decarbonization even more difficult. Global carbon pricing is an essential part of any long-term solution to the climate crisis, but advanced economies need to provide the developing world with a carrot and not just a stick. This should come in the form of highly concessional financing, combined with technical expertise and sharing of best practices – all guided by a World Carbon Bank. The IMF, the World Bank, and regional development banks have an important role to play, but their mandates are too diffuse for them to deal effectively with the climate challenge on their own. Meanwhile, those who think that governmentto-government assistance should not play any role in climate solutions need to bear in mind that stateowned firms, which are not terribly responsive to economic incentives, increasingly dominate the global coal
industry. Is it too optimistic to think that inwardly focused advanced economies will ever be willing to earmark large amounts of aid – at least $100-200 billion per year – to help the developing world meet climate goals? The response to the COVID-19 crisis so far offers little encouragement; the G20’s Debt Service Suspension Initiative has delivered a few billion dollars of relief to 40 very poor countries, but that pales in comparison to the trillions that rich countries have spent on their own citizens. An enhanced carbon tax or pricing regime could be one source of sustainable funding over the longer term, but the problem is too urgent to wait for this to fall into place. The goal of achieving zero net CO2 emissions by 2050, which the EU has adopted and the US is likely to do soon, is praiseworthy. But not-in-my-backyard, or NIMBY, environmentalism is no way to solve a global problem.
Kenneth Rogoff, a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is Professor of Economics and Public Policy at Harvard University. Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2021. www. project-syndicate.org
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