The agreement means that the GCAA will continue to provide air traffic services to the Central African country through the Accra Flight Information Region which also manages the airspaces of Accra, Togo, Benin, Sao Tome and a vast portion of the Atlantic Ocean.

The new agreement was signed between the two countries when the Minister of Transport, Kwaku Ofori Asiamah, led a delegation from the GCAA to Sao Tome and Príncipe on a working visit to the island country.

The Director-General of GCAA, Charles Kraikue, signed the agreement on behalf of the GCAA, while Director-General of the Sao Tome International Airport and Air Navigation (ENASA), Captain Antonio Luis Ferreeira Trindade, signed for the island country.

Ghana’s control over the air space of Sao Tome and Príncipe dates back more than two decades, when the two states signed an agreement on April 7, 2000, for Ghana to manage the Accra Flight Information region to install Very Small Aperture Terminal (VSAT) and Very High Frequency (VHF) equipment in Sao Tome to improve on air traffic services over the Atlantic Ocean to ensure safety of aircraft.

Professional management

In a meeting with Ghana’s delegation, the Sao Tome and Príncipe’s Minister of Infrastructure and Transport, Adelino Afonso Fernandes Rosa Cardoso, expressed appreciation to Ghana, especially the GCAA, for its professional management of the air space over two decades.

He said Ghana and Sao Tome’s relationship would continue to grow stronger to benefit the two countries.

Mr Cardoso appealed to Ghana for more support in the area of aviation to sustain the industry in the country.

Safety oversight

The Director-General of the Sao Tome Civil Aviation, Antonio dos Santos Lima, also appealed to Ghana to assist his country in its aviation safety oversight responsibilities.

“Ghana is ICAO’s champion state and we will require the GCAA to offer us assistance in the form of training and technical expertise to be able to improve on our country’s ICAO effective Implementation rate, which stands at 18 per cent,” he added.

Ghana’s commitment

The Minister of Transport, Kwaku Ofori Asiamah, assured of Ghana’s continued support to the Sao Tome and Príncipe aviation industry, especially in the area of air traffic training, aviation language proficiency and other technical training that would serve as a catalyst to drive growth.

He urged the two states to abide by the agreement signed and promised to ensure that the GCAA committed itself to the terms and conditions of the agreement signed.

Technical needs

The Director-General of the GCAA, for his part, gave the assurance that the GCAA would immediately deploy technical staff to assess Sao Tome and Principe’s technical needs and structure a planned agreement to assist it to attain an appreciable safety implementation rating.

Mr Kraikue said the minimum ICAO effective implementation rate was 75 per cent.

“Ghana at the last safety assessment in April 2019, obtained an Effective Implementation or EI rate of 89.89 per cent, which remains the highest by an African state, after ICAO concluded its Coordinated Validation Mission (ICVM),” he added.