Africa has many things going for it: plenty of space (3x larger than North America), abundant natural resources, young & growing 1.1bn population (estimated to climb to 2.4bn by 2050: E&Y), rising GDP and improving geopolitics. However, a rapid, efficient and cheap transport network is certainly not one. In fact, if you’ve ever had the chance of flying across the continent, then you’ll know first-hand of the punchy airfares (3x-4x higher than Europe), frequent delays and poor customer service. No wonder Africa possesses 15% of the world’s population and 20% of its land mass, yet generates only 3% of its air-travel. That said, things are changing after the introduction of low cost carriers (LCC) like fastjet Tanzania (fjT). Since launch on 29th November 2012, the company has flown >1.5m passengers (see below) of which 364k were in H1’15 (+56% YoY) and 75k (+17%) in August alone.
