Staff Writer
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) has launched a series of safety training and capacity-building workshops to improve aviation safety across Africa.
Held under IATA’s Focus Africa’s Collaborative Aviation Safety Improvement Program (CASIP), the monthly workshops and webinars will provide safety professionals with practical tools, guidance and best practices to strengthen safety management and operations.
“The all-accident rate for Africa was 7.86 accidents per million sectors in 2025. That’s an improvement compared to Africa’s five-year average of 9.37, but as this is still several times the global average, we have more work to do. Through the CASIP safety workshops, we are bringing together the expertise of industry partners to foster knowledge exchange and give safety professionals practical tools and best practices that can help strengthen safety performance across the continent,” said Kamil Alawadhi, IATA’s regional vice president for Africa and the Middle East.
The program launched with an in-person Safety Management Systems (SMS) workshop in Nairobi, Kenya, delivered with support from Boeing, Kenya Airways and IFALPA earlier this month.
Upcoming activities include a ground operations risk management webinar in August, space debris awareness webinar in September, runway safety in-person workshop in October and a GNSS RFI awareness webinar scheduled for November.
CASIP brings together IATA and industry partners including the African Civil Aviation Commission (AFCAC), the African Airlines Association (AFRAA), the Airlines Association of Southern Africa (AASA), Airbus, Boeing, Brussels Airlines, the Civil Air Navigation Services Organisation (CANSO), the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), the International Federation of Air Line Pilots’ Associations (IFALPA) and Kenya Airways.
IATA represents over 370 airlines accounting for some 85% of global air traffic. Launched in 2023 under the safety pillar of IATA’s Focus Africa initiative, CASIP brings together governments, regulators, airlines, manufacturers, and industry partners to reduce the accident and serious incident rate across Africa through targeted, measurable safety improvements.
The programme supports the creation of a safer operating environment that strengthens connectivity, efficiency, resilience and sustainability across the continent.
Together, CASIP partners work to identify deficiencies in operational safety and implement corrective action plans; provide safety training and workshops continent wide; promote a data-driven approach to safety performance with emphasis on making safety data available to decision-makers and ensuring efficient accident/incident reporting.
