Flying in Africa is, as they say in the village, going to hell on foot. It was in the early 1980s that I became aware of this deplorable reality. At Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle, I had then met a senior cousin of the Guinean State who, coming from Conakry, was going to Harare to convey a message from Sékou Touré to his Zimbabwean counterpart Robert Mugabe. Pass through Paris to go from Guinea to Zimbabwe! Normal, I tell myself, the first country is in full dictatorship and the second is at the beginning of its independence!
Forty later, I have to say that the evil is deeper than that. And that, worse, it extends to the scale of the continent. A few years ago to go from Conakry, where I live, to Durban in South Africa, I had to go through Dubai. And last November, I have already mentioned it in these columns, I had to land in Paris before joining Sao Paolo. But that’s not all, left for Algeria at the beginning of May, I had to stop over in Milan and then in Casablanca on my return.
Air transport, road traffic, and garbage collection are the best criteria for judging the quality of a state. And precisely, it is in these three areas that African states are most lacking. This is especially true with regard to the first. In Africa, the disturbances on the ground are ten times greater than in the sky: routes are convoluted, flight delays are not counted in hours but in days and, my goodness, the airlines only last what the roses last.
I am of this generation which, in the euphoria of independence, saw the birth of Ghana Airways, Air Guinea, Air Afrique, Nigeria Airways, Air Algérie, Kenya Airways, etc. African airlines, finally planes of our own! The plane, in our heads as kids, meant freedom, modernity, two words that went very well with our nascent sovereignty! In fact, we were living in an era that was “taking off”, if you dare put it that way. Mac Douglas had just released the DC8, the first jet airliner, and Yuri Gagarin had just achieved his space feat. Flying machines didn’t just fascinate us middle schoolers, it was the whole world that dreamed of soaring.
I remember having seen in 1962, at the Vox cinema in N’Zérékoré, the famous Haitian, doctor Price-Mars, equipped with cardboard rockets, explaining to a room half-filled with illiterate peasants, how a sputnik works, and proclaiming, urbi et orbi: “Soon the Blacks will have their own rockets. It was a time when anything was possible, even the wildest dreams.
Alas, we are far from the mark. Not only does Africa still not have its rocket, but most of its airlines have disappeared under the well-known effect of mismanagement. With the exception of a few small companies that appear and disappear here and there, depending on the circumstances, only Ethiopian Airlines, Kenya Airways, South African Airways, Royal Air Maroc, EgyptAir, Tunis Air and Air Algérie are really holding up.
One wonders after that why Africa does not take off. Well, because she hasn’t found her wings yet. “Communism is the Soviets plus electricity,” Lenin said. Too bad none of our leaders thought of parodying it: “Development is transport plus electricity.” »
* 2017, Grand Prix de la francophonie for all of his work; 2013, Palatine Grand Prize and Ahmadou-Kourouma Prize for The Black Terrorist; 2012, Erckmann-Chatrian Prize and Grand Prix for Métis Novel for The Black Terrorist; 2008, Renaudot Prize for The King of Kahel; 1986, Literary Grand Prix of Black Africa tied for The Scales of the Sky.