Assessing the Yamoussoukro Decision: Accounting for Determinants of Air Transport Liberalization in Africa

In the wake of global developments towards the penultimate decade of the twentieth century, the post-colonial itch to be competitive became vital as engagement for African states at the international stage changed. The political economic models employed needed to be reviewed. Air transport, a key driver of many economies had to be realigned with the global changes. African states sought ways in which air transport could be modelled to increase intra-African connectivity through concerted liberalization efforts. These considerations informed the adoption of the Yamoussoukro Declaration in 1988 whose implementation was followed through the Yamoussoukro Decision (YD) in 1999, a political multilateral agreement set to encourage openness of air transport between African states in the hope that it would stimulate economic growth. Its successful implementation would culminate that intra-African air services had been successfully liberalized. This study sought to assess the implementation of the YD by analyzing the impact of the three determinant variables which are tariffs, business competitiveness, and perceptions of dominance on the level of air service liberalization. The three form the independent variables of the research. Data for objectives one and two was sought from World Trade Organization (WTO) using the Air Services Agreement Projector tool that measures air liberalization index (ALI), the dependent variable in the study and Most favored Nation (MFN) principle for tariff data while Expert interviews were used to collect thematic data for the third objective. Thus, the study is based on three main objectives. The first and second objectives highlighted the economic perspective with the first objective depicting a negative correlation between tariffs and ALI revealing that 2.3% changes in ALI were attributed to government tariffs. Second was the business competitiveness which was reflected through the profit margin of the dominant designated airlines of the ten states and this showed that there is a positive relationship between ALI and business competitiveness with 5.6% changes in ALI being contributed by business competitiveness. The final objective on the political sphere sought to analyze challenges and prospects that impact on regional integration informed by perceptions of air transport hegemonic dominance and its impact on ALI and surprisingly, this showed that it is patriotism and governments using airlines as strategic tools of development rather than fear of domination by other successful carriers in the region. This exploratory research links the three determinants of the study to the levels of air transport liberalization thereby highlighting their specific impact to the implementation of the Yamoussoukro Decision.