Tuesday 11 September 2018

Ethiopian Airlines is founding new African flag carriers


Full article on economist.com

When The Economist wrote about Ethiopian Airlines in 1989, we praised the company’s “unqualified success” despite operating in a “disastrous economy” infected with civil war, famine and Marxist inefficiency. Having grown its passenger count 17-fold since then–to the benefit, not the detriment, of its profits–Ethiopian is now the envy of all African governments. Most are saddled with loss-making flag-carriers or none at all. Tewolde GebreMariam, Ethiopian’s boss, wants to change this by helping some of his neighbours set up new companies and others overhaul existing ones. But while his intentions are good, he cannot fix the broken sector alone...

Saturday 1 September 2018

Interview: Thomas Hallam, Somon Air CEO


Full article in JPG format: page 49, page 50 & page 53

Tajikistan’s Somon Air launched operations in 2008 with the aim of breaking the monopoly enjoyed by state-owned flag-carrier Tajik Air.

Chief executive Thomas Hallam makes no bones about the challenges of running a business in Tajikistan – an impoverished central Asian republic where corruption and cronyism still dominate the corporate landscape.

But by learning from the success of Air Astana, Kazakhstan’s flag-carrier, Somon Air is rapidly overcoming these obstacles. An obsessive focus on safety, transparency and international standards has secured the company both IATA membership and TCO (Third Country Operator) authorisation in Europe – two recognised benchmarks for operational excellence...

Back to the Silk Road


Full article in JPG format: page 121, page 122 & page 124

Distilling complex economic strategies into straightforward, digestible terms is never an easy task, and China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is no exception.

Originally launched in 2013 as the One Belt One Road Initiative, Beijing renamed its pet-project two years ago following confusion about the use of the singular word “one”. In fact, the BRI encompasses an array of land and maritime trade routes that collectively bind together the economies of Europe, Asia and Africa.

Many of the BRI’s land corridors overlap with the ancient Silk Road networks that allowed traders to move their goods from East to West for more than a thousand years. But there are new pathways too – in regions once skirted by the cart-pulling camels and horses – and there is even now a “Digital Belt and Road” that focuses on e-commerce and scientific cooperation.

Put simply, the BRI means whatever the administration of Chinese President Xi Jinping wants it to mean – and its definition and scope changes year by year...