COMCEC Transport and Communications
Outlook 2019
39
Table 13: Per capita air passengers carried at the OIC Member States (2017)
MENA Sub-Saharan Africa Asia
Qatar 10.9916 Mauritania 0.0978 Maldives 2.9930
United Arab Emirates 10.0458 Togo 0.0650 Brunei Darussalam 2.7615
Bahrain 3.4740 Cote d'Ivoire 0.0322 Malaysia 1.8707
Oman 1.9428 Gambia, The 0.0243 Suriname 0.4995
Kuwait 1.3772 Mozambique 0.0199 Indonesia 0.4166
Turkey 1.3306 Nigeria 0.0181 Kazakhstan 0.3134
Saudi Arabia 1.1331 Cameroon 0.0096 Azerbaijan 0.2366
Lebanon 0.4212 Sudan 0.0081 Turkmenistan 0.2223
Tunisia 0.3668 Burkina Faso 0.0076 Kyrgyz Republic 0.1819
Jordan 0.3458 Senegal 0.0014 Tajikistan 0.0897
Iran 0.2390 Uganda 0.0013 Uzbekistan 0.0797
Morocco 0.2371 Niger 0.0007 Afghanistan 0.0512
Libya 0.1803 Somalia 0.0003 Pakistan 0.0477
Algeria 0.1508 Bangladesh 0.0237
Egypt 0.1246
Iraq 0.0578
Albania 0.0359
Source: Author from the World Bank World Development Indicators
Figure 18 shows the changes in the air freight traffic among the OIC regions between 1993 and
2017. One implication of Figure 18 is that air freight traffic in the OIC-Sub-Saharan Africa has
been quite premature and fell well below the other regions during this period. It is also
noteworthy that there is an exponential growth of air freight traffic in the OIC-MENA region
since 1993.
As a result of the boom, OIC-MENA has experienced an about 17-fold increase in its air freight
traffic between 1993 and 2017 whereas OIC-Asia only less than doubled its air freight traffic
during the same period. When the aggregate data is decomposed, it is seen that the boom of air
freight traffic in the OIC-MENA region mostly originated from UAE.
Figure 18: Total air freight carried in the OIC regions (million ton-km) (1993-2017)
Source: Author from the World Bank World Development Indicators, adjusted for missing data
0
5000
10000
15000
20000
25000
30000
35000
40000
1993199419951996199719981999200020012002200320042005200620072008200920102011201220132014201520162017
Air freight traffic (million ton-
km)
OIC Asia OIC MENA OIC Sub-Saharan Africa OIC Average