COMMERCIAL AIRCRAFT FINANCE ENTITY
for Africa and the Indian Ocean
CAFE came about from our interest in aviation as a key enabler of modern economies, as comprehensively explained in MIT’s Analysis of the Interaction between Air Transportation and Economic Activity: A Worldwide Perspective and Oxford Economics’ Aviation: The Real World Wide Web.
Asked to speak on innovative financing strategies for African aviation at the Leadership Conference in Gaborone in August 2010, we decided to float the CAFE concept publicly but not before asking the likes of Girma Wake, then CEO of Ethiopian Airlines, Titus Naikuni, CEO of Kenya Airways and Chris Smyth, then Acting CEO of South African Airways, and several former senior colleagues (from GPA of old) for their thoughts. These senior lights and several other airline CEOs and senior management endorsed the CAFE concept with so little equivocation that it seemed irrational not to pursue it.
We have since discussed CAFE with airline senior management and/or shareholders in many countries including Algeria, Angola, Botswana, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Lesotho, Madagascar, Mali, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania and Zimbabwe; and our travels have taken us to many of those countries, the USA, Europe and Singapore to ascertain the probability of support from the public sector (including Government ministries and agencies with responsibility for African development and global infrastructure enhancement), the private sector (including OEMs, lenders, lessors and legal counsel) and ‘persons of influence’ such as Bob Geldof and Jamie Drummond. In almost all cases, there has been an element of pushing at an open door but some uncertainty as to how to make CAFE a reality.
Here we explain one way of making CAFE a reality. The forces on African commercial
aviation are significant. It is now time for African airlines, their shareholders and
business partners (including OEMs especially) to get behind CAFE and propel it forward.
Ke nako.
Mark Tierney, Sarah Flannery, Mark Nicholas - Crabtree Capital