Qatar Airways and RwandAir had signed a “milestone” codeshare agreement that was inked in 2021.
Qatar Airways is “in the final stages” of finalising an equity investment in an airline in “the southern part of Africa,” with an announcement expected to take place within two or three weeks, the airline’s Group CEO, Badr Al Meer revealed.
“We are at the final stage of an equity investment in an airline in the southern part of Africa. This airline will help us and complement the operation of Kigali,” Al Meer told a panel at the Qatar Economic Forum on Wednesday.
Titled Connecting the Middle East & Africa, the panel gathered the Qatar Airways chief and RwandAir’s CEO Yvonne Manzi Makolo.
Both sides weighed in on the connection in the aviation sector between the Middle East and Africa as well as Qatar’s expansion into the region.
Al Meer noted that Africa has “so many opportunities” that Qatar can tap into, noting the Gulf state’s airline flies to more than 30 destinations in the continent.
He pointed to Kigali being a key area of cooperation to expand in Africa.
“When it comes to central Africa, we couldn’t find any better partner or any better location[…]to create or to build a hub for us and our partners other than Kigali and this is where we started working with RwandAir,” he said.
Qatar Airways and RwandAir had signed a “milestone” codeshare agreement that was inked in 2021.
Between 2022 and 2023, both sides operated around 156 flights between Doha and Kigali. During the same period, the airline witnessed a 10 percent month-on-month growth, resulting in more than QAR 7 million in revenues.
In May last year, Qatar Airways Cargo launched its first hub, in partnership with RwandAir, for its cargo handling.
The move aimed to expand the African air cargo network and meet the three-to-five percent of its annual economic growth forecast for the continent within a decade.
Qatar Airways network in Africa includes Lusaka, Harare, Abidjan, Algiers, Accra, Cape Town, Abuja, Nairobi, Johannesburg, Zanzibar among others.
