• Qatar Airways and Kenya Airways establish strategic agreement, introducing a third daily flight between Doha and Nairobi.

• Part of wider Qatari initiatives that includes a 60% stake in RwandAir and 25% stake in South African's Airlink.

 Qatar Airways is growing its footprint in Africa, recently signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Kenya Airways to structure a strategic partnership. The agreement sees the daily introduction of a third flight by Qatar Airways between Doha and Nairobi, which will involve code-sharing with Kenya Airways.

In addition to this, Kenya Airways plans to commence a flight route between Mombasa and Doha in the winter of 2025. The Kenyan airline will operate these flights, but they will be marketed by Qatar Airways. The partnership also includes plans to broaden their respective international network code-sharing. Other areas of cooperation such as air freight and ground services have also been discussed.

This tie-up between Qatar Airways and Kenya Airways represents part of the Qatari carrier’s broader initiatives in Africa. In East Africa, the airline owns 60% of RwandAir and is co-financing the new Bugesera International Airport in Rwanda. With an estimated cost of $2 billion, this project aims to handle 14 million passengers per year by 2032 and is expected to become operational by 2027.

Earlier this year, Qatar Airways resumed its direct flights between Doha and Kigali, which had been suspended since 2021. The airline has also facilitated travel by scrapping visa requirements for Rwandan nationals.

In Southern Africa, the airline acquired a 25% stake in regional South African operator Airlink in August 2024. This is intended to strengthen a complementary secondary network to its main hubs.

During the recent Qatar Economic Forum, Benin and Qatar explored the possibility of establishing a direct air link between Cotonou and Doha, through a partnership between Qatar Airways and Benin's new national airline, Amazone Airlines. Regular flights between the two capitals could potentially stimulate tourism, investments, freight transport, and cultural exchanges.

Qatar Airways Group CEO, Badr Mohammed Al-Meer, stated that the MoU with Kenya Airways reinforces the company's commitment to Africa. Emphasizing the role of the airline in transforming the continent's aviation and economic ecosystem, Al-Meer underscored the economic benefits to the group, which reported a 28% increase in its net profit for the fiscal year 2024/2025, to $2.15 billion, and a rise in revenue to $24.6 billion.

While Qatar Airways has demonstrated strong performance, the specifics of the group’s impact in Africa are not yet fully quantifiable. This throws up several questions around the airline's strategy for Africa. Factors that will be keenly observed include the progress of the MoU with Kenya Airways, the operational implementation of current partnerships, shifts in regional and intercontinental demand, and the stability of the environments where these projects are based.

Louis-Nino Kansoun