African airlines' traffic growth rate for 2023 exceeded that of Latin and North America as well as Europe, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) said.
African air traffic grew by 38.7% year-on-year in 2023, outranking Latin America (28.6%), North America (28.3%), and Europe (22%), the report said.
Apart from that, the traffic posted by African airlines rose 9.5% in December 2023, compared with that in December 2022, the IATA added.
The association also revealed an increase in capacity and load factors for the continent's airlines.
"Full year 2023 [African] capacity was up 38.3% and load factor climbed 0.2 percentage points to 71.9%," the IATA said.
The Asia-Pacific region was the leader in air traffic growth, accounting for 126.1% for the year, the agency noted, adding that its capacity rose by 101.8%.
Globally, the association found that total traffic in 2023 was even closer to pre-pandemic demand.
"The strong post-pandemic rebound continued in 2023. Total traffic in 2023 [...] rose 36.9% compared to 2022. Globally, full year 2023 traffic was at 94.1% of pre-pandemic (2019) levels," the report said.
However, Africa's share of the air passenger market remained low compared to other regions, at 2.1%. Europe had the largest share (30.8%), followed by North America with 28.8%. This was followed by Asia-Pacific (22.1%), the Middle East (9.8%), and Latin America (6.4%), the agency revealed.