25 Years after the Abuja Treaty, AfCAC Renews its A-Game
By E K Bensah Jr in Lome
17 June, 2026
Sometimes, when you are living through an incredible historical moment, the momentousness of it rarely hits you till when you least expect it.
Here’s something for size: what do you get when you add a simple formula – AfCAC + AfCFTA + AUDA NEPAD to T3 (Trade-Tourism-Transport)?
You get the Lome Ministerial Declaration, and when it’s superimposed against the backdrop of the 25th anniversary of the Abuja Treaty (signed 3 June, 1991), you get a little bit of power packed in under three pages.
Evidently, I am understating it.
At a time when the US-Iran spat has exposed some of Africa’s vulnerabilities, – dependence on jet fuel and more – it has also underscored how important the continent has become in serving as a strategic player – as per aspiration 7 of Agenda 2063.
While numerous flights were grounded in the US and Europe, few were aware how it was Africa’s airlines – Ethiopian Airlines (ET) and Kenyan Airways (KQ) – that were the major panacea transporting passengers around the world, easily circumventing the crisis that had impacted the Western and Gulf carriers.
Who would have thought that in this same year, a barely-known AU agency – established just six years after the erstwhile OAU in 1969 in Dakar, Sénégal- would come to dominate headlines in the same month that the continent would typically have been reflecting over the achievements of the Abuja Treaty?
For too long, Africa’s aviation has been consigned to the realm of the esoteric – as if to suggest it were too technical to be accepted as an important cog to Africa’s integration. Yet, when you really think about it, given how Africans love to move and trade – as evidenced by the visa-free regimes of regional economic communities (RECs) like ECOWAS; EAC; SADC; IGAD et al, coupled with the onset of AfCFTA five years ago – it should have been a dominant conversation.
Judging by events in Lome this week, that is all going to change.
If AfCfta was the game-changer for intra-African trade in 2019, seven years later, it is incontestable how the African Civil Aviation Commission (AfCAC) is the new Johnny-come-lately complementing and deepening Africa’s connectivity, mobility, and dreams for a more palpable continental integration.
It is for this reason ECOWAS Business News decided to curate sixteen points emanating from the Ministerial Declaration.
Sixteen main points so we remember the significance of 16th June 2026 – lest we forget how far Africa has comes quarter of a century after the Abuja Treaty.
