Embracing Aviation as a Means to National Development

By Asiwome Dzakuma

Aviation has long been a cornerstone of global economic growth — stimulating trade, facilitating business, catalysing tourism, and driving regional development. Yet despite sitting at the crossroads of West Africa with immense strategic advantages, Ghana’s aerospace potential — and particularly its General Aviation sector — remains almost entirely untapped.

A Global Industry of Enormous Scale

Air transportation is provided by over 1,500 airlines serving approximately 45,000 airports worldwide. Nearly 40 percent of international tourist arrivals travel by air, and about one-third of the world’s manufactured exports are transported by aircraft. For every million passengers, at least 1,000 airport jobs and 200 off-airport positions are created. Beyond direct employment, aviation reduces the cost of trade, attracts businesses to well-connected locations, supports new technologies, and strengthens national cohesion.

The Overlooked Engine: General Aviation

When people think of aviation, they picture commercial airlines. But General Aviation (GA) — encompassing private flying, charter operations, agricultural aviation, aerial survey, medical evacuation, corporate aircraft, and flight training — forms the true backbone of any mature aviation ecosystem.

A landmark 2025 PwC study found that GA in the United States alone supports 1,330,200 jobs and contributes $339.2 billion in total economic output. The global GA market was valued at $31.9 billion in 2024 and is forecast to reach $57.3 billion by 2034. This is not a niche sector — it is a rapidly growing one.

Critically, GA is also the essential pipeline for aviation talent. The overwhelming majority of commercial pilots, engineers, and air traffic controllers begin in GA. A nation without a thriving GA sector cannot grow its own aviation professionals and is condemned to import them at enormous expense.

What Real-World Examples Show Us

Kenya earned Ksh 452.2 billion from tourism in 2024 — a 20 percent increase — welcoming 2.4 million international visitors. Aviation supports $3.3 billion of economic activity there, equivalent to 3.1 percent of GDP. A central pillar is GA: Kenya’s world-famous safari destinations are served by a thriving network of light aircraft and charter operators. Without this infrastructure, high-value wildlife tourism simply could not function at scale.

AMREF Flying Doctors, headquartered at Wilson Airport in Nairobi, has since 1957 demonstrated what GA-based medical services can achieve. Operating Pilatus PC-12s and Citation jets, AMREF conducted over 1,000 emergency medical transports in 2024 alone, reaching patients across East and Central Africa. Ghana has no equivalent. Medical evacuations from remote northern communities still rely on improvised arrangements, at great cost to patients and families.

Brazil has built the second-largest fleet of agricultural aircraft in the world — over 2,700 aircraft. Approximately 60 percent of Brazil’s agricultural exports depend on crops that utilise aerial application at some stage. Research confirms aerial application can increase corn yields by as much as 8 percent over ground methods. For Ghana, where agricultural productivity remains a critical challenge, the implications are profound.

Botswana has leveraged its wilderness into a thriving high-value tourism economy built almost entirely on GA — generating disproportionate revenue while limiting environmental impact. These are not aviation superpowers. They are small nations that made deliberate policy choices to develop GA infrastructure and create enabling environments for private operators. Ghana, with a far larger economy and population, has every reason to aspire to more.

Ghana’s Untapped Potential

Ghana has made very little effort to harness the enormous aviation opportunity at its doorstep. While neighbouring countries develop GA ecosystems, Ghana has yet to articulate a coherent national aviation policy that adequately addresses General Aviation’s role in national development.

Ghana’s civil aviation regulatory framework has achieved credible safety standards — but regulation alone is not a strategy. What is missing is a deliberate, government-backed GA development plan that creates the right environment for businesses to grow, airstrips to be rehabilitated, flight training schools to be supported, and Ghanaian entrepreneurs to invest in aviation services.

The airspace above Ghana is underutilised. Many regional airstrips are in disrepair. The pipeline of locally trained aviation professionals is thin. Communities in the Upper East, Upper West, Savannah, and Oti regions remain largely unreached.

The Case for a National General Aviation Policy — Now

A clearly articulated national aviation policy with GA at its heart is long overdue. Key priorities must include:

• Rehabilitating regional airstrips across all regions for charter, medical, agricultural, and emergency operations
• Establishing a GA development fund for Ghanaian entrepreneurs investing in aircraft and aviation services
• Creating an enabling regulatory environment — streamlined registration, competitive fuel pricing, simplified airspace access
• Supporting flight training institutions to build a domestic pipeline of pilots and technicians
• Integrating aerial agriculture into national agricultural policy, deploying aerial application to major farming zones
• Developing GA-based tourism corridors opening Mole National Park, the Volta Region, and beyond to air-accessible eco-tourism
• Establishing a national air ambulance framework so no Ghanaian dies because help could not arrive in time
• Leveraging AfCFTA connectivity by positioning GA as a tool for intra-African trade and business travel

The evidence is unambiguous. General Aviation is not a hobby for the wealthy. It is a development tool — one that saves lives, feeds nations, opens markets, connects communities, and generates sustainable wealth. Kenya proved it. Brazil proved it. Botswana proved it.

The question is no longer whether Ghana should develop its GA sector. It is how much longer Ghana can afford not to.

A Call to Action: Arise and Fly

Strategic Aviation Services (SAS) — a 501(c)(3) General Aviation social investment organisation incorporated in both West Africa and the United States — is stepping forward to meet this challenge. SAS was founded with a single conviction: that aviation can and must be a catalyst for sustainable development across Africa.

SAS is now mobilising through its Arise and Fly campaign — raising $10 million to unlock GA programmes across West Africa, including life-saving medical airlifts, agricultural and food transport, youth pilot training, and humanitarian relief flights. SAS seeks to launch from Ghana and expand into Burkina Faso, Togo, Nigeria, Côte d’Ivoire, Benin, and Mali.

Governments, businesses, diaspora communities, and individuals who believe aviation can transform Africa are invited to be part of this moment.

Learn more at strategicaviations.org

Together, we can help aviation lift lives — and help Ghana, and all of West Africa, finally take flight.

About the Author

Asiwome Dzakuma is Founder and Executive Director of Strategic Aviation Services (SAS), a nonprofit organization advancing General Aviation as a tool for socio-economic development in Africa. A commercial airline pilot, certified flight instructor, and aviation advocate, he has spent more than two decades in the aviation industry and is leading efforts to expand access to aviation resources, training, and services across West Africa.