Director General (Tanzania Airports Authority)

H.E Jakaya Kikwete has had two wonderful terms that has put Tanzania on the right Track to attain its Vision 2025 – I want to understand how did his policies reform has affected the Tanzania Airport Authority?

Under National Transport Policy, one among the major items was the improvement of infrastructure in Tanzania and specifically in the transport sector. Air transport is a sub-sector of transport sector; therefore TAA is one of the institutions, which has been mandated with two major functions - Airport development, Operations and Maintenance of Airports. During ten years of his Excellency, President Jakaya Kikwete has been supporting TAA and he has helped the institution to achieve tremendous improvements. Initially before he came into office we had about three to five tarmacked airport but today we have about twelve, and therefore he has done a great job, looking at the economic outlook of Tanzania. In addition, the only few airports which are economically viable includes Dar-es Salaam, Zanzibar and Kilimanjaro. In order for these big airports to prosper there should be also good investment in small airports to boost the entire development of air transport in Tanzania. Under national transport policy, every single region in this country should have one airport, which can accommodate an aircraft with the size of 70 to 100 passengers, and we have achieved to build those airports. Actually, we have not yet done it but we have managed to come up with fifteen airports and we have 30 regions in Tanzania. All these fifteen airports have black top run way, which allow landing of aircrafts at all seasons.

What were the major roles & responsibilities of Tanzania Airport Authority in these major achievements?

Actually the major role is to take care of the development of these airports. Consequently, we are engaging contractors to develop of air transport in Tanzania. We work as such – a development phase and an implementation phase. In development phase, TAA is organizing funding for development and construction of new airports and rehabilitation processes while implementation phase focuses on recruitment of the contractor to perform the work. The development stage includes; Designing, preparation of the documents and financing by institutions while under implementation stage TAA has currently invested in the construction of terminal three with the capacity to accommodate 6 million passengers while currently Dar es Salaam airport has capacity to accommodate 2.5 million passengers. HSBC Bank is financing the project. During the economic crisis in 2008 most of European countries came up with the Export Credit Agency (ECA) program to stimulate their economy and ECA was responsible for guarantying the borrowing under the condition that the product should come from specific country. Therefore, what we did for terminal three is that we had three of them including Canadian ECA, UK ECA and Netherlands ECA. Afterwards, we signed loan agreement and we started procurement of the BAM contractors from Netherlands.

How is it to collaborate with an international company to build the Airport?

It is actually quite interesting. When you go for example to UK finance, the first things you need to identify are the big contractors within the country. BAM is one of the biggest contractors in Netherlands. Secondly you need to be sure on how you go about it. Considering that BAM and the government of Tanzania have a long-term relationship in doing several projects, it was easy to sign contract with BAM Construction Company from Netherlands. The implementation stage is still in process whereby the construction of terminal three is in good position now and the TAA and the Government of Tanzania will be proud of having such a big terminal whose capacity is big to accommodate about 6 million passengers compared to the current terminal that we have which can only assure the accommodation of 2.5 million. TAA is targeting in developing the air transport in Tanzania.

So what would you say the impacts of the new terminal beyond the economy of Tanzania?

In terms of economy when you put 1 USD you can easily harvest 12 USD so in Africa. maybe it is 7-8 therefore my anticipation is to get that back so I am going to put 250 million Euro so that in the long run I will be able to harvest as much as I can. The other thing is, with this new terminal building I have to employ other 6,000 people therefore the construction of new terminal three will result into creation of employment as well. Again the air transport is surely an industry by itself in sense that it involves a lot of activities to ensure development and operation of air transport system. I came across with one article said ‘sell airline by Airport” show that air transport in Tanzania grows about 12% annually and we are targeting to achieve more and make sure that air transport contributes good numbers to the development of economy in Tanzania.

What explains this increasing demand? Is it tourism or business?

President Jakaya Kikwete has managed to build a lot of visitors in Tanzania, the investors and if you check the details of the passengers most of them are tourists and some are business people therefore it is a combination of both tourists and business people that explains the increasing demand and those are drivers that stimulate growth in Tanzania. We actually have a flight to Amsterdam from Tanzania, it used to come from Amsterdam to Kilimanjaro then to Dar es Salaam and back to Amsterdam, but now there is a direct flight from Dar es Salaam to Amsterdam. In terms of economic growth I think the middle-class is rapidly growing in Tanzania, people are now using air transport to go to several places within and outside the country so that is another factor because initially the international transport was going very fast while the domestic was stagnant, but now actually domestic transport has developed above 20% as the result of the middle-class growth in the country. Air transport in Tanzania is now everywhere, for example Dar es Salaam to Mwanza and other regions; people now can have access to air transport which wasn’t the case before.

Tanzania Airport Authority is managing all the airports in Tanzania. How do you manage to coordinate all that?

We have close to six airports excluding Zanzibar because in Zanzibar they have their own management and they have two airports, but in Tanzania we have Kilimanjaro, Mwanza, Kigoma, Tabora therefore it is very easy because they are managed by the headquarter. It is portfolio kind of management because other airports are small and therefore they cannot run by their own. Hence it is very expensive to manage so the headquarters are the backup. However, Dar es Salaam Airport stands alone because they have everything from Director, Manager security, manager finance etc.… They are very independent. Therefore other small airports need support and we support them. For instance when they need engineering advice, we send the experts to help them and we also send our engineers to supervise the implementation of various projects within these small airports. Therefore this is how I manage to run these airports. Another thing is that working with high profile customers such as Emirates, Qatar and Turkish is difficulty because these are high profile customers and they know what they want so you need to be smart.

Could you tell us something innovative that Tanzania Airport Authority that has accomplished in the past ten years?

Three years ago we have had introduced a system called Common User Terminal Equipment (CUTE). Therefore most of these airports have CUTE system and three years ago Tanzania was the first country to implement CUTE system. The implementation of CUTE system explains the latest technology that we have adopted for air transport in Tanzania and it also explains how Tanzania Airport Authority has been innovative during the past ten years. Not only implementation of CUTE system, but also making sure that the airlines are getting less cost, which is another major function of Tanzania Airport Authority (TAA).

Dubai Airport is one of the biggest Airports brand in the world - do you think Tanzania will reach that level of offering within the next ten or maybe twenty years?

Yes, I am very optimistic and I will tell you one thing, we have 30 years plan called Civil Aviation Master Plan (CAMP) which is the master plan for the next 30 years of development of air transport in Tanzania. We know our direction and through Civil Aviation Master Plan (CAMP) we have managed to demonstrate various development activities within air transport system in Tanzania, again there is no doubt surely within few years Tanzania will achieve to reach that level and it is going to become a brand, it is just the matter of time. Therefore Civil Aviation Master Plan is a driver towards development of air transport in Tanzania.  

I would like to know what you feel most proud off as the Director General of Tanzania Airport Authority (TAA).

Actually in the last four years I have achieved a lot, all the implemented projects came up after four years despite the fact that Air transport was not among the big result now initiatives in Tanzania. It was not an easy task. That’s one of the things that make me feel proud of what I have achieved as the Director General of Tanzania Airport Authority. The second thing is that I have managed to build a strong team, under TAA we have a very strong team and of course I managed to extend path to things done by people including committed ones, performance and ethical.

As you finish, do you have any message that you would like to share about TAA and Tanzania in general?

There is a big future in Air Transport in Tanzania and my dream is to see big aircrafts from Emirates or Qatar Airways fly to Tanzania. I would like to give a message to my fellow colleagues of Tanzania to be more progressive and proactive regarding we have whatever we call resources that we need, therefore it is just the matter of utilizing these resources.