EFFECTS OF WEST AFRICA’S  UDEVELOPED AIRPORTS DEVELOPMENT ON PASSENGERS SAFETY AND SECURITY

Abstract

Airports play an essential role in the development of every economy. There is a wide range of activities that take place in an airport apart from the arrival and departure of airplanes. There are hotels, entertainment, exhibition and retail, office building, among others.  This means that many people are interacting and money exchanging hands.  For the business to take place efficiently, security is essential.

West Africa is a region made by sixteen countries that are in the west of most of Africa. The area has an estimated population of about 381 as per 2018.  West African countries are still underdeveloped, and therefore, security is a concern to their governments.   The fact that they are still developing means that their security systems are not well established, and their transport system, including airports, is threatened by insecurity. This paper aims to identify the setbacks of underdeveloped airports on the safety and security of airport passengers. It shall determine the various holes that are open in underdeveloped airports.  The holes may be used by ill-intentioned people to harm the activities of an airport located in West Africa.  The paper shall gather relevant information by reviewing the work of other people who had an interest in similar topics as secondary data. The data obtained from the literature review will give a visible picture of the airports located in   The impacts of West Africa under the developed airport to passenger’s safety, and security will be shown clearly.

 Introduction

Background research

In many countries, airports serve as the main entrance to the country from all other parts of the world.  An average airport has landing areas, safety and security, lighting navigation, and weather equipment, among others (Ray, 2014).  Some airports have facilities that enable the storing of goods awaiting fright. Also, there are designed areas where aircraft that are not in a panic are kept to be serviced and maintained.  The place where airplane land consists of a vast open land free of any material that would block its aerial view. This makes it accessible from above their airplane can depart and land efficiently.  There is a controlling tower positioned in such a way that it is visible by airplane approaching the airport.  Operators in the watchtower guide airplane as they land.  International airports have offices for customs officials to ensure authorized departure and arrival of people and goods (Greenleaf, 2020). These type of airport are very complex and occupies large pieces of land and tall buildings. Unfortunately, in underdeveloped countries such as these found in West Africa do not emphasize a lot on developing security systems. Airports are left exposed to the risk of being attacked by ill-intentioned individuals as well as the occurrence of accidents whose impacts are catastrophic. Given the complexity of an airport, it sometimes becomes challenging to ensure everyone’s safety. A secure and safe aviation airport is vital to the protection of not only the passengers but also of the whole region.  West Africa is the undeveloped region, just like most of Africa, and they lack sufficient funds to develop their airports to attain world-class standards.  It this under development that leaves loopholes that criminals can use to conduct their unlawful activities.

The impacts that poor security and safety have on passengers in West African countries cannot be underestimated.  It should be understood that international airports act as entries and departure points of international passengers. When they are attacked at the entrance, the picture of the country that they are visiting is completely tarnished.  This has very negative impacts on several economic sectors, such as tourism. Underdeveloped airport does not have enough facilities to monitor the entrance and departure of goods and people. This means that terrorism can easily smuggle illegal weapons and use them to cause mass destruction.   As a result, people’s perception of the airport located in the region under study will be shaped by what they hear from the news or by what happened to their friends and families.  Underdeveloped airports depend solely on the authority and the countries’ intelligence systems to warn them against plots of attacks. Sometimes those warnings come late when the unlawful activity has caused severe impacts to passengers and properties. A well-developed airport should have measures through which they can use to detect and prevent the occurrence of illegal activity.

Advancement in technology has provided sophisticated methods that can be used to attack aircraft and airport infrastructure. In west Africa, as a result of underdeveloped airports, they lack the necessary facilities to prevent these types of attacks exposing passengers to risks. Underdeveloped airports may require reasonable measures to prevent cyber-attacks that disrupt the essential process that happens in an airport, such as air traffic control systems. The cyber attackers also can interfere with navigation aid, passenger bookings, and some extent camera surveillance of the entire airport leaving the whole airport exposed to criminal attacks. These criminals can also extract confidential information about passengers. This is because after they have interfered with the system, they book air tickets for people who may not have been allowed to book.

Scope of the Study

Undeveloped and underdeveloped airports leave passengers vulnerable to attack.  This is because such airports lack the necessary infrastructure to identify and block entry of unauthorized people as well as actionable items that can be used to conduct criminal activities (Kamba, 2016).  This paper will concentrate on exposing how underdevelopment makes west African Airports inefficient in identifying and blocking illegal activities.  The article will continue by further defining the impacts such criminal activities have on passengers of west Africa airports. Some of the significant Airports that will be considered in this paper include Cotonou Cadjehohoun, Ouagadougou airport, and Kotoka international airport in Accra. The rest include Banjul international airport in the Gambia, Port Bouet Airport of ivory coast, Leopold Sedar Senghor international airport, the largest airport in Senegal, Bamako Modibo Keita international airport of Mali and finally Roberts international airport in Morovia (Samuel, 2019).  All these airports have underdeveloped, and therefore it is difficult to ensure the safety and security of their passenger.

Objectives of the Research

The primary objective of this research is to identify the effect of West Africa’s airport under development on passenger safety and security.

General Objectives

1. Determine the significant attributes of an underdeveloped airport.
2. Identify the primary reasons why West African countries are not able to develop their airports to achieve international standards.
3. Assess the ways in which underdeveloped airports are incompetent in identifying and preventing the occurrence of a crime.
4. Propose methods through which West African countries can use to develop their airport infrastructure to meet international standards.

The rationale of the study

Citizens from West African countries have been very anxious becomes no one knows which countries are going to suffer next from terrorist attacks.  The attacker targets place with large numbers of people, such as airports. Even to make the matter more complicated international airports are a suitable target to them since they have a high amount of foreign citizens (Simovic, 2018). If terrorist hits this area, it means that they will attract international attention as opposed to other areas.  With the recurring incidents of attacks, it’s evident that the airport has installed inefficient facilities to cope with the situation.

Aircraft themselves can be used as a weapon of mass destruction; therefore, airports are highly delicate places.  It is more than evident that west African airports are poorly equipped in many ways, including their security systems.  For example, in some Airports, they use sniff dogs to detect drugs, but sniff dogs cannot sniff explosive. It was found some lack of CCTV cameras installation, and who have installed not all of them are working correctly. This means that a thief will still from a passenger and mix with the crowd and will not be caught.

Most importantly, this airport lacks necessary cybersecurity, which makes it easy for a cybercriminal to interfere with their systems. As a result, relevant data about their passengers can be illegally accessed by unauthorized people. Also, guiding the landing and departure of an airplane can be tampered with endangering the lives of hundreds of passengers in the planes.  Airports are highly delicate places. As a result, when they lack the necessary facilities, their passenger’s lives and properties are endangered. This paper will show precisely how airport passengers in west Africa can suffer as a result of a shortage of necessary equipment.

Study motivation

West Africa’s air passengers are exposed to numerous risks because of the underdeveloped infrastructure installed in the airports. The impact that those inefficient infrastructures have on the securities of the passengers is what this paper seeks to establish.   If those impacts are well clarified, then this paper can be used to stimulate authorities and other stockholders of the transports sector in the region to channel the required resources and develop those airports to the better of not only the passengers but even employees and properties. West Africa’s airports have severe weaknesses in its infrastructure, and as a result, equally severe defects also exist in the security systems of those airports.  The impact of inadequate security measures in an airport can be far more catastrophic than people have ever imagined before, as this paper will proceed to establish.

The rationale of the study

As an aviation student, this study will help us understand the level of safety in Airports in underdeveloped countries. The study will also expose various factors that hinder such countries from developing their airports to international levels. As a person with an aim to develop a career in aviation, this study has made it very clear that indeed a serious challenge exists when it comes to maintaining security and safety measures in our airports. I will make safety and security my priority taking it in mind that airports are delicate facilities.

Literature Review

According to Greenleaf (2020), underdeveloped airport is an airport that lacks various infrastructures that help such airlines operate efficiently hence ensure the safety and security of passengers and employees. They lack enough well trained and experienced staff to handle the operations of an airport. Various installations that help airplanes land and take off efficiently are absent, and on rare occasions when they appear, they are limited. Mechanisms to detect and counter criminal activities accurately are not well established. Different research studies have been done to establish airport security in different nations. This section reviews the different kinds of literature on the effects of underdeveloped airports on passenger safety and security shall be obtained by analyzing and synthesizing key sources that are related to the topic. With the literature review, it is easy to trace the intellectual progression of the subject in question to generate sufficient information to answer the questions.  Intending to solve the problem, it was necessary to subdivide the literature review to subtopic to sort out the materials that will generate sufficient answers.

Figures of Airlines in West Africa

The air transport industry in Nigeria had experienced steady growth since 1985 when entry into the domestic airline sector and airfares were deregulated by the government formally. The industry in Nigeria gradually transformed from a national carrier focus to private carriers. Presently, the sector accounts for the second-highest share in average contribution to the transport industry. While road transport accounts for the biggest share with about 84%, air transport carries about 6-7% (Daramola & Fagbemi, 2019). According to Daramola & Fagbemi (2019), Nigeria has   20 airports, more than 18 aerodromes, and over 30 regulated airstrips and heliports; 23 domestic airlines; more than 554 licensed pilots; 913 licensed engineers and more than 1700 cabin personnel (Daramola & Fagbemi, 2019). As an important destination to over 22 foreign carriers, it has a bilateral air services agreement with over 78 countries. Nigeria also serves a direct airline connection to different business centers across the globe, such as London, Paris, Frankfurt, New York, Johannesburg, Atlanta, Amsterdam, Dubai, and Jeddah, among others.  Between the years 2008-2017, over 139 million passengers flew through Nigeria’s airports, 100 million of which were domestic passengers. Domestic passenger traffic takes over 70% of the total number of those using air transport in the country. And international takes the remaining 30% (Daramola & Fagbemi, 2019). With such great numbers, security in airports and largely in the airline industry in Nigeria is of immense significance. According to ICAO (2020), there was a 176 fatal accident in 2019 alone. This could have greatly decreased if prevention measures were taken.

Attributes of underdeveloped airports in West Africa

According to Kamba (2016), an airport that is not well developed can be easily identified by a person who has visited well developed and equipped airports.  Unfortunately, most of West Africa Airports fall under the underdeveloped category.  The first problem that faces most airports in West Africa is the lack of an excellent method of transport between the airport and the city (Kamba, 2016).  The best means of transportation between an airport and the nearest city should be a railway. Unfortunately, in west Africa, railways are not well developed as a means of transport (Simon, 2015).  There is congestion of personal vehicles operating as taxis to carry passengers to town after they have landed and to bring those wishing to board. This congestion makes it difficult to monitor the entry and exit of people and luggage at the airport. It, therefore, becomes effortless for criminals to smuggle illegal weapons at the airport.

A good example can be seen when Ghana airport company signed a contract with SITA (Nksian, 2020). In the agreement, SITA and the independent company would manage passengers’ processing, luggage, and airport systems. This is a clear indication that before this contract. The airport could not adequately handle these critical processes that are very important in ensuring the safety and security of passengers. The fundamental weakness of underdeveloped airports is poor time management (Novak, 2014).  The schedule that is followed by airplanes when they take off and land should be easy to predict to avoid unnecessary confusion that may give criminals a chance to do their criminal activities.  According to Novak (2014), when planes take time to depart, then they should, other events are not given enough time, and that can be a significant threat to security. Activities such as security lines should be carried sufficient time to ensure that everyone who boards an airplane is well identified and their luggage checked to ensure that it is free of any unlawful commodity.  In most West African airports, time management is a big problem, and therefore identification and checking are made in a fast and whimsy way.

According to research conducted by Bull (2016), cybercrimes are significant threats to the West Africa Aviation industry. At the very least, the airports lose millions of dollars, and at worst, they allow terrorists to achieve their goals. The attackers use a low key and deny operators access to the system. In this case, they become the operators themselves, and they may guide the airplanes to go in the way they wish. Attackers also enter the system of airport management and illegally permit their criminal colleagues to gain access to the airports facilitating them to engage in illegal activities (Greenleaf, 2020).  Most of the West African system has been designed weakly and, therefore, very insecure.  When they were being built, the focus was on availability but not security.  In Roberts Airport, it was found that only 2% of over 5000 thousand employees had skills in data encryption and security. This leaves the passenger’s information potentially exposed to hackers.

Reasons for Underdeveloped Airports in West Africa

West African countries are not able to develop their airport infrastructure to attain the international level required to ensure the safety and security of the passengers (Samuel, 2016). According to the study by Samuel (2016), the significant reason why West African countries have failed to deliver world-class safety measures is because of a shortage of funds.  Installation of various infrastructure that will ensure that all passengers are safe can be costly. In an airport, safety begins with maintenance of the aircraft to ensure that they are in an excellent condition to depart and remain in the air until they arrive at the destination.  The process of maintenance requires highly skilled technicians that are expensive to high and retain. West African airports are not able to hire enough technicians compromising the safety of passenger’s information and, eventually, their security and safety (Ray, 2014).

A research conducted by Simovic (2018) on low-cost airports found out that most Western African countries, revenues that the airports collect, are handed over to the country’s treasury. In turn, these airports depending on the treasury to finance their operations; this slows their projects aimed to improves safety measures.  Throughout West Africa, private sector participation in the running of the airport is limited. In some parts such as Burkina Faso, the private partnership has been reduced to management contracts and concessions involving small investments (Nksian, 2020). This debris air navigation in the region and weather analysis methods are not uniformly distributed and are concentrated in few areas.  Conakry international airports located in Guiney lack the technology used in air surveillance.

West Africa civil aviation authorities are not well funded, making it difficult to efficiently fulfill their duty of inspecting safety measures (Greenleaf, 2020).  According to the article, Greenleaf explained that people who occupy top seats of those authorities are political appointees selected based on their connection rather than their competence. As a result, the management of those authorities is weak, and leaders are unaccountable of the performance. This has led to consistently losses decreasing funds that might have been used to increase safety and security measures.   Lack of enough funds limits the installation of facilities that will ensure the efficient handling of luggage (Ray, 2014).  The number of the passenger traveling in west African countries has significantly increased over the years, but the facilities have not been expanded.  Other airports that are well funded have installed various technologies that simplify tracking of bags. This technology enables the authorities to monitor the packets throughout the journey and, at the same detecting unlawful materials that may be inside the container. The technology reduces bags mishandling cases and, at the same time, increases security at the airport (Kamba, 2016).

Shortage of security personal

It is expensive to train people to handle security issues in any setting (Jones, 2018). The airport faces a wide range of security threats from cybercrimes to terrorist attacks.  This indicated that specialists in those areas are needed. A data scientist who can develop and maintain systems that can withstand any form of attack are very few.  This forces some airports to decide to train their own, which is an expensive venture (Simon, 2005).  Even after training the fresh graduates do not have enough competence to protect their organizations against attacks.   In cases of physical attack, highly trained and well-experienced specialists are needed.  They should have a general understanding of how an airport works and to be able to protect it (Samuel, 2019). These kinds of people are rare to find, making it expensive to hire them and maintain them.

A significant problem that west African airport faces is the lack of proper curriculum to train airport security personnel (Simon, 2015). It is important to note that airports have their own unique set up, and therefore the security needed to guard the place should be competent to identify and prevent the occurrence of criminal events. Also, the security personnel should be able to use the security gadgets at the airports in a unique way so that they can prevent crimes long before they happen (Greenleaf, 2020).  Lack of political will power to straighten activities that occur in West African airports is a significant challenge for the development of safety and security measures. The fact that the government allocates funds to be used means that most of the major projects must be going through a lengthy process before they can be approved.  Many people, from politicians to board members must discuss such plans before they can be accepted (Mitchener-Nissen et al. 2012). As a result, it takes too long to install facilities that could have been done ion far less time. These reasons have made West African airports remain underdeveloped for a very long time. As a result, the safety and security of passengers ate under constant threat.

The incompetence of Underdeveloped Airports

Various reasons deter West African airports from installing correct infrastructure that will ensure the safety and security of passengers (Simovic, 2018; Novak, 2014; Se’Kapchangah, 2008; Jones, 2008). Corruption is one of the significant problems that endanger safety in major west African airports (Jones, 2008).  According to Jones (2008), the airport authorities have failed to install various machinery that will prevent fraud from their airports. Illegal travelers identified one corrupt official and gave him gifts, and in turn, they reoffered access to the airport through the back door. Cases of passengers who are late offering money to uniformed officials and the officials, allowing them to pass through the VIP line has been reported West African airports. If a criminal pretended to be late, they will follow the same procedure and will gain access to an airplane (Jones, 2018). The passengers in the planes will end up being exposed to untold misery should the criminal conduct their unlawful acts. Another aspect is that some West African airports are known to use sniff dogs to identify illegal items (Oluwakoya & Ogundipe n.d.). According to the research done by Oluwakoya & Ogundipe (n.d), those dogs are trained to identify the specific type of illicit cargo. In some cases, a sniffing dog can only identify drugs and not explosive. This means that if there is a terrorist who in possession of such items, then they will not be detected.

West African airports suffer from underdeveloped and unreliable systems, which make them a good target of cybercriminals (Wang, 2014).  The cybercriminal identifies the weakest link and defines a channel from a small airport. Using this channel, they will trace their way back to bigger airports. The system of all airports is interconnected, and therefore attacking one airport makes it very easy to attack another.  Also, West Africa has a shortage of people who understand the real problem and have the capacity to develop a long-lasting solution.  The attackers can destroy largescale havoc in major airports cause a massive number of flight delays (Wilson et al. 2006).  On some occasions, they even cause flight cancelation and interfere with security alerts. This can permit illegal people in the airport and eventually facilitating them to achieve their unlawful goals. On various occasions, when such attacks occur, a lot of passenger’s information falls in the hands of the attackers. This information can be used to conduct illegal activities (Bogicevic et al., 2013). It includes their identification number, their dates of birth, marital status, and even their traveling patterns. This confidential information can be used to register a false document that can be used to conduct a crime further.

Underdeveloped airports in West Africa lack the necessary installation that can reduce the impact of an accident (Se’Kapchangah, 2008). Additionally, the research further found that most of the airports do not have enough facilities to deal with fire in case there was an outbreak. While there are fire extinguishers, Se’Kapchangah (2008) points out that they are not in a working condition, and therefore in the event of a fire, they cannot be of any assistance. The inadequate navigation equipment that the airports rely on is not capable when it comes to giving accurate information about the weather. The probability of an airplane flying over underdeveloped is very high, and this puts the lives of the passengers in significant danger (Ray, 2014).

Insufficient infrastructure for safety and security

Underdeveloped airports of West Africa have made passengers vulnerable to various accidents as well as attacks by criminals. This is according to an article done by Leone & Liu (2018). The findings of the article point out that an airport with inferior methods of detecting illicit or harmful goods such as chemicals that can cause fires, such products will easily pass the checking points (Leone & Liu, 2005). The impact on the passengers will be that they will lose their lives at worst. If they are lucky, they will be injured, and in the least, they will lose their property.  Fires are potential health hazards to every place that experiences congestion of people. Therefore, west African Airports should consider installing various necessary infrastructure that will help prevent fire outbreak if they occur.

In some cases, an aircraft may not be well checked by a qualified technician before embarking on a flight. This can be due to the shortage of skilled technicians or the lack of various infrastructure that is needed to check the fitness of a plane (Bull, 2016). Such a flight may take off and then crush. The impacted ranges from atrophic to less or no harm injury. In some accidents, there has not been any reported case of a survivor.  On 5 May 2007, Boeing 737-800 bound to Kenya from Cameroon, crushed only 11 minutes after it took off in Doula, Cameroon (Simovic, 2018).  The officials said that they lost contact with the pilots. It was later established that bad weather was the cause of that accident, which did not have any survivors. This is a clear indication that if the airport had a competent method to measure the weather, 114 lives could have been saved.

When the security systems of airports are insufficient, robbers are likely to steal from unsuspecting passengers and get away (Bull, 2016).  In west Africa, underdeveloped airport security systems enable robbers and operate within their perimeters.   On 19 February 2018, in Mortal Mohammed international airports in Lagos, Nigeria robber broke into an aircraft and stole luggage that belonged to passengers (Simovic, 2018).  The situation was saved by a Ghanaian pilot who was experienced in such cases. He unleashed hot gases that scared them away (Samuel, 2019).  The fact that the pilot was experienced in this type of situation and even had a strategy to deal with it means that this kind of phenomenon is common in West Africa. If the attempted robbery was a success, the passengers could have lost their luggage and other valuable items.

Information about passengers that is required by an airport before a passenger can fly can be seen as an excellent gateway to steal identity and commit fraud using the status of the unsuspecting passengers (Simovic, 2018).  The information included the name of the passenger, their address, occupation, and address. Therefore, passengers can suffer when criminals use their identity to commit crimes. To some extent, even the traveling patterns of passengers can be extracted from the system. Passengers occupy high ranks in the government as well as the cooperate world exposing their identity is a significant risk to their security. When criminals understand the traveling patterns of a person, it will be straightforward to trap them.

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