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Business in Africa

Challenges & Opportunities for Defense Transportation Providers

By Christine Wayne Denton Manager, Marketing & Business Development, AAR Airlift Group

The many elements that make Africa a challenge to sustained and coordinated support also make it an opportunity to those logistics services providers that are capable of offering creative, cost-effective and reliable solutions to the transportation dilemmas in Africa.

The development of Africa’s abundant natural and human resources has long been impaired by a variety of natural and man-made threats that make a continued or expanded US presence on the continent likely. Indeed, even an abbreviated survey of recent events—the 2014 Ebola pandemic in West Africa; the 2012 attack on the US diplomatic mission in Libya; and the rise of Islamic and ethnic terrorist activity from groups like Boko Haram, ISIS, the Lord’s Resistance Army, and al-Shabab—clearly demonstrate the transnational threats that are intensifying demands on foreign aid organizations, diplomatic missions, and on US and allied defense forces. US defense and diplomatic leaders are aware of the challenges. During a 2014 visit to Africa, Secretary of State John Kerry highlighted that although Africa is home to many of the fastest-growing economies in the world, progress is hindered by continued crisis, in some instances plunging the continent back into the turmoil of the past. In March of 2015, Army General David M. Rodrigues, Commander of US Africa Command (AFRICOM), testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee that trans-regional terrorism is expanding aggressively, citing for example that while al-Shabab has weakened in Somalia, it remains a threat to US interests elsewhere on the continent and has broadened its operations to conduct attacks against other countries in East and Central Africa. The Department of Defense and aid organizations must carefully allocate their resources throughout a vast area to manage a range of threats.

But how are US leaders to respond in a time of tightening resources and shrinking budgets? Foreign aid accounts for less than 1.5% of total federal spending. Other aid comes in the form of training assistance for African security forces to improve readiness and build local capacity to manage regional threats. Where political will and associated resources do exist, the logistical impediments to operating in Africa are notorious. Torrential seasonal rains leave many unpaved roads impassable for months at a time. Among those roads that remain feasible, a lack of secure routes makes ground transportation in some areas unreliable or inadvisable. Railroads are non-existent. These factors, coupled with the sheer size of the continent, often mean that airlift is essential for maneuver and movement within the African theater. The US presence at Camp Lemonnier, Djibouti, serves as a strategic entry point to the continent, but defense forces must rely on an extensive network of forward bases to sustain operations. By air, the distance

Supporting such a complex footprint requires ready access to complex supply chains—a daunting undertaking in remote and austere locations. This challenge is magnified by conducting aviation services in which robust inventories are time consuming to place, at risk of environmental damage, and often prohibitively expensive to maintain on site.

from Djibouti’s capital to Bamako, Mali is greater than that between Washington, DC, and Anchorage, Alaska. Airlift—and the talent pool and supply chain which sustain it—is therefore an indispensable force enhancement for defense, humanitarian, and peacekeeping activities.

The many elements that make Africa a challenge to sustained and coordinated support also make it an opportunity to those logistics services providers that are capable of offering creative, cost-effective and reliable solutions to the transportation dilemmas in Africa. Global commercial and defense aviation services provider AAR Corp. has traded aviation parts with customers in Africa for the last 30 years. In addition to its commercial enterprises, it has dramatically increased its defense business in Africa. The company’s Airlift division, a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Part 135 and DOD Civil Air Reserve Board (CARB) certified carrier, provides aviation services to the Department of Defense and the United Nations in East, Central, and West Africa. In addition to traditional fixed-wing and rotary-wing passenger and cargo transport, AAR Airlift provides many of the special mission services critical for safe and effective flight operations solutions in the rugged African terrain—night vision systems, short takeoff and landing on unimproved surfaces, search and rescue (SAR), low-cost aerial delivery (airdrop), Medical and Casualty Evacuation (MEDEVAC and CASEVAC), and Personnel Recovery. Where turnkey operations are necessary, the company is capable of providing its own support including base camp, fuel, food services, potable water, communications, security, and licensed medical support.

Supporting such a complex footprint requires ready access to complex supply chains—a daunting undertaking in remote and austere locations. This challenge is magnified by conducting aviation services in which robust inventories are time consuming to place, at risk of environmental damage, and often prohibitively expensive to maintain on site. For FAA certified airlines, high airworthiness standards require especially ready access to complex global supply chains. Success begins with understanding and operating within the local political, economic, and social structure. US Embassy officials are an invaluable resource for information ranging from obtaining secure lodging and business space to local area security, reputable vendors, and introductions or insights related to indigenous political and social systems. In the defense business, one simply cannot risk having a critical aircraft component delayed in customs for days or weeks on end, during which time services to customers cannot be delivered.

For US businesses with a physical presence in Africa dependent upon air or surface transportation for sustainment, navigating the myriad customs processes presents a particular challenge. While compliance with the rule of law varies substantially from one country to the next in Africa, US companies are subject to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and must, therefore, be especially alert to the pervasive influence of corruption. When dealing in shipments subject to International Trafficking in Arms (ITAR) restrictions, the challenge is magnified. Some customs offices in Africa lack computers and, therefore, record all goods entering their country in paper log books. This can present a nightmare for companies tracking shipments around the globe if their business systems aren’t prepared to accommodate such a manual process. Whatever the local circumstances, AAR Airlift has found it imperative to have highly trustworthy local vendors and legal representatives who are capable of guiding it through the customs processes while remaining sensitive to the rules within which US companies must operate.

Even so, contingency planning and flexibility are a must. At AAR Airlift, virtually every shipment is analyzed for multiple potential routes and modes of delivery with emphasis on cost and potential impediments to on-time delivery. Travel times on such routes may take between four and six days, or up to one to two months depending on the season. For supply chain planning, that’s a huge difference between having a mission-capable aircraft to support your customer. To compensate for unusually long lead times, deployments to Africa include more extensive spare parts and tooling kits and, sometimes, a spare aircraft. In extreme circumstances, AAR will deploy an employee from the US to Africa as a courier for a critical aircraft component. All this increases costs to the customer over what may be expected in the US or even other third world locations in which contingency operations are lesser impaired by natural or man-made barriers to performance. The level of up-front investment required is much greater in Africa than in other theatres.

For transportation contractors, fuel is among the most basic logistics needs. With a vast territory to cover and diminishing budgets, defense customers are increasingly reliant on their contractors to be truly integrated partners willing to take a more proactive stake in their shared mission, and that includes responsibility for fuel management. AAR communicates with customers in Africa to determine the location of future missions, so that adequate fuel stores can be prepositioned in theatre. The company also maintains multiple forward fuel staging areas, which must be maintained, secured, and inspected regularly for quality. The largest of these fuel farms stores at least 90,000 liters at any given time. Fuel trucks typically take a minimum of 45 days to reach remote sites. More than ever, contractors must work hand-in-hand with their customers to carefully coordinate missions.

For service providers especially, people are a company’s most valuable assets. Flying and maintaining airplanes in Africa is not for the timid. Whether establishing an office in Africa in a city center or developing a basecamp from an empty clearing— and we have experience with both—businesses must account for underdeveloped infrastructure and sanitation standards. Items to consider range from the bare es

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sentials like clean water and secure housing facilities, to more complex issues like ensuring employees can access emergency medical facilities, and remain integrated with enterprise business systems. Again, the US Embassy provided guidance. AAR was introduced to an American firm which had been doing business in Africa for more than a decade, and had established an extensive network of contacts including local service providers. Local knowledge is power, because First World business systems can’t be easily replicated. With the right business partner, we were able to find everything we needed; in some instances we can reliably obtain supplies we need off the local economy, in other instances we have supplies brought in from outside.

One of the first and most critical elements on our checklist in Africa is the establishment of satellite communications systems. Aircraft maintenance and logistics operations are managed through advanced automated software systems, so technology infrastructure must be integrated to allow employees in the field to have access to their support stateside. Constraints related to the reliability of communications may require flight crews and technicians call back to

base or maintenance control at headquarters to check on availability of parts. The communications piece is both a business factor and a human factor; employees in the field rely on communications with our systems operations control center at headquarters to do their jobs, but it’s also important they can call home and stay connected to their families while on deployment for weeks or months at a time. Regardless of the need, it’s essential that leadership and employees have confidence in the technology systems so that energy and efforts can be expended on the mission.

In the most remote regions, radar coverage and air-to-ground com munications are not accessible for flight crews. Flight planning must take into account the conditions of landing strips, the likelihood of in clement weather, the availability of alternate landing zones, all without a formalized airspace structure.

AAR Airlift established its reputation as the largest OCONUS Part 135 airlift provider to the DOD during the Afghanistan and Iraq wars beginning in 2003, with operations that were entirely integrated with that of our customers. For these missions, contractors’ jet fuel, hangar and office facilities, and life support had all been provided by the customer at collocated facilities; in Africa, contractors typically must manage those needs commercially. Working for the DOD in Africa is different and more challenging than in other notoriously austere locations such as Afghanistan because in Africa the DOD does not have a heavy footprint capable of sustaining contractors as it has in the past. The Africa theatre is not an active war zone controlled by a Theatre Combatant Commander, so contractors operate within the confines of local laws and customs.

One of the areas where this becomes most apparent is in complying with local airspace regulations. Traditional expeditionary aviation operations typically occur in war zones where the airspace structure—and all compliance and oversight elements—are provided by the US or an allied government. Carriers certified by the FAA who also fly in Africa must integrate local host nation CAA regulatory compliance factors into their standard operating procedures. AAR’s crewmembers must be privy to and recognize the requirements of not only FAA parts 61, 91 and 135, but also the requirements of the DOD Air Mobility Command Commercial Airlift Review Board (CARB), local US Military and US Embassy compliance measures, host nation regulatory requirements and various international airspace regulatory oversight agencies like ICAO and ACSENA. Enhanced personnel training above and beyond FAA and CARB requirements is another example of the upfront investment required for operations in Africa.

In many instances, US contract airlift providers are also challenged by non-formalized airspace on the continent to support operations. Missions between two metropolitan locales in Africa can typically be conducted under instrument flight rules (IFR), but outside highly populated areas these systems may not be mature or reliable enough to support full IFR operations. In the most remote regions, radar coverage and air-to-ground communications are not accessible for flight crews. Flight planning must take into account the conditions of landing strips, the likelihood of inclement weather, the availability of alternate landing zones, all without a formalized airspace structure. Specialized aircraft modifications help compensate for these factors. Night vision goggles allow for safer flights to unlit rural airfields. Satellite phones on board the aircraft provide a link to flight operations coordinators on the ground. Satellite-based navigation and tracking systems allow each aircraft to be monitored by headquarters during taxi, takeoff, mission execution, landing, until aircraft shutdown.

The factors contributing to the underdeveloped aviation infrastructure are many. African civil aviation regulations and defense air assets largely reflect the legacies of their former colonial powers. This creates a modern set of barriers between neighboring countries caused by a variety of aircraft platforms, regulations, maintenance protocols, training curricula, and languages, further hindering the development of the African aviation infrastructure. Aftermarket aircraft maintenance and support requires a deep bench, and discrete maintenance requirements for African defense fleets add to the challenge. Deregulation and privatization of the commercial aviation industry has come more slowly in Africa than in other regions, another factor leading to inefficiency. To illustrate the gap these factors generate: the International Air Transport Association reported in 2013 that Africa has an accident rate of 10.85 accidents per million departures, compared to a world average of 1.2 accidents per one million departures.

Whereas US commercial air operators can draw from a talent pool of skilled civil and military aviation professionals, and ro