Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has told operators and officials that aviation and tourism in Africa will not take off on paper plans alone. He said they need good government, a working economy and people who actually know what they already have.
He spoke as Special Guest of Honour at AeroWest Summit 2026 in Lagos, on the theme Financing Connectivity: Unlocking Aviation and Tourism Growth in West and Central Africa. The gathering is a three-day meeting of operators and governments from West and East Africa, with guests from Barbados and other Caribbean countries, looking for ways to close the gaps that keep the region’s travel and visitor trade underused.
Obasanjo said prosperity comes first. Passengers fill aircraft only when people have money. Money follows a thriving economy, and that, he argued, follows good governance. Without that chain, talk of routes and destinations stays empty. He also pushed back on the idea that Africa simply lacks links. The bigger failure, he said, is not knowing what is already valuable, and not keeping it. If you do not know what you have, he asked, how do you protect it?
Working in isolation, he warned, will not deliver. Aviation and tourism should feed each other, as should culture. He called for training of staff and of host communities: how to receive visitors, how to welcome them, and how to make them feel they belong. Connectivity, in his view, is not only between planes and hotels. It is also between people and the places they live.
Ola Wright, Chief Executive Officer of the West Africa Tourism Organisation and convener of the summit, said Africa does not lack destinations, attractions or stories. What it has lacked for too long is connectivity and investment. The task is not only to build sites, she said, but to get people to them. The future of the continent’s tourism, she added, will rest on those links, on money put into the business, and on Africa telling its own story.
Obasanjo left the organisers with a charge: the summit should be a start, not an end, and they should get it right.
