Asia or Africa: which is the hottest market?

Thursday 4th February 2016

Ahead of this year's Nigerian Business Aviation Conference Segun Demuren, CEO of NBAC host EAN Aviation, joined a panel of experts to propose that the African business aviation market will be "hotter" than the Asian sector in 2016. Delegates attending the annual Corporate Jet Investor conference in London on 1-2 February, enjoyed a lively contest, which pitted the two emerging markets' teams against each other to win the title of "hottest" market.

Attendees, who initially voted for Asia, had their outlook altered by the "hot" African team - Segun Demuren, EAN Aviation, Ettori Poggi, ExecuJet, Scott Plumb, JetCraft and David Minty, Investec - who together convinced the audience market opportunity would be greater in Africa.  Supporting evidence demonstrated that Nigeria still had a strong part to play as figures from the International Monetary Fund indicate Nigeria's anticipated GDP change for this year would be 4.1%. Whilst the country's recent economic growth has been fuelled by the hydrocarbon sector, the panel argued that Nigeria also boasts a range of industrialists that are still conducting a huge amount of non-energy related commerce intra-Africa, and continue to use executive jets to facilitate their business.

The NBAC theme of Sustaining Nigeria's Place on the African Business Aviation landscape will further debate and discuss how the country's executive aviation sector will continue to grow and contribute to African business aviation growth when it takes place on 17 - 18th March.

www.nbac.com.ng