AFRAA’s Abderahmane Berthé told TDN the 90 percent figure reflects capacity, not will. The survey behind it also shows 36 percent of responses with no plan to adopt NDC within five years.
When TDN interviewed AFRAA Secretary General Abderahmane Berthé in June, he did not dispute the statistic the industry keeps repeating about African NDC adoption. He disputed what it means. “What the figure does not tell us is how alive African carriers are to modernisation,” he told TDN. The survey behind the figure answers part of that question, and the answer is less uniform than the interview suggested. In a survey of African airlines, more than 90 percent of responses came from carriers that are not yet NDC enabled, and 36 percent of responses said the airline has no plan to implement NDC within five years.
The figures come from the TPConnects-AFRAA Airline Distribution Survey 2025, as presented by TPConnects to AFRAA members in May 2025. The survey drew 70 responses from over 25 airlines, so every percentage in this piece is a share of responses, not of airlines.
What Berthé told TDN
Berthé’s reading of the number was that it shows constraint, not indifference. The overwhelming majority of African carriers, he said, are still transacting through legacy GDS infrastructure “that was not designed with their operating context in mind.” The 90 percent, he said, “reflects the consequences of under-resourced aviation ecosystems, not a lack of strategic will.”
He named the absence of in-house technical capacity as the most consequential barrier. Cost, he told TDN, can be addressed through financing mechanisms and fragmentation through interline and codeshare arrangements, but the shortage of digital talent inside African airlines is a structural problem that takes years to resolve. As evidence of appetite, he pointed to the survey’s findings that over 40 percent of airlines are planning or implementing NDC, with 18 percent expecting to finish within a year and 28 percent within two to three years.
That case rests on the survey. The survey’s own breakdown is more complicated than the interview reported.
Who is inside the 90 percent
The presentation asks whether an airline has an NDC API gateway. Forty-six percent of responses say no. Twenty-four percent are planning to implement, 21 percent are implementing and 9 percent are NDC enabled. The first three groups add up to 91 percent. The presentation’s own takeaways slide rounds that to “90% not ready for NDC yet,” and that is the figure in circulation. The release issued by AFRAA and TPConnects in June 2025 describes the same findings as nearly half with no NDC capability and over 40 percent planning or implementing.
The groups are not interchangeable. A carrier in the middle of an implementation has committed money. A carrier with no gateway and no plan has not. TDN’s interview described the 90 percent as AFRAA member airlines with no NDC capability. The survey supports neither part of that description: 46 percent had no gateway, and the base is survey responses, not member airlines.
How the number reads also depends on where implementers are counted. A TPConnects write-up of an AFRAA webinar puts about 30 percent of AFRAA members as NDC-capable or implementing and 70 percent as planning or not yet started. That matches the survey’s 9 and 21 percent on one side and 46 and 24 percent on the other.
The 36 percent
The presentation’s timeline slide covers the planned timeline for implementation. Eighteen percent of responses say within a year, 28 percent in two to three years, 18 percent in four to five years, and 36 percent say they have no plans. The slide does not state its base, and four figures adding up to 100 percent does not establish that all 70 responses answered the question. If they did, 36 percent is roughly 25 responses. Several could come from the same airline, so the number of airlines behind the figure is unknown and may be lower.
Berthé cited the first two timeline figures. The interview did not carry the other two, and the release’s headline findings leave the 36 percent out as well. Read as published, 46 percent of responses point to NDC within three years, and more than a third do not expect it within five.
This bears directly on his question. If the issue is how alive African carriers are to modernisation, a group that reports no plan in five years is part of the answer.
Capacity or choice
Berthé’s argument is that missing capacity, not unwillingness, explains the gap. The release reports that 81 percent of airlines carry fewer than two million passengers a year, 80 percent operate fleets of 15 aircraft or fewer and 60 percent still run on-premises systems. The presentation’s respondent profile points the same way: 40 percent of responses come from airlines with one to five aircraft, and 44 percent from airlines carrying under half a million passengers a year.
That reading fits carriers that are planning or implementing. It is harder to apply to a response that reports no plan in five years. A carrier lacking capacity but wanting NDC might be expected to name a later date, not none. TDN does not know why these responses say what they do, and the published material does not say. There are at least three possibilities, and they are inferences, not findings. Some carriers may have concluded that a six-aircraft operation gains little from NDC. Some may be waiting for cloud-based, modular offers priced for their size, the kind Berthé called for. Some may not yet have a view.
The survey also leaves a question open on cost. The presentation lists reducing distribution costs as a top objective for 100 percent of respondents, and the release says GDS and intermediary fees are cited as unsustainable. The survey does not establish what carriers in the no-plan group are doing about cost. They may be renegotiating GDS terms, pursuing other efficiencies, accepting the costs or lacking the resources to act.
What the survey doesn’t say
The presentation discloses more than the release does: 70 responses from over 25 airlines. AFRAA lists 48 member airlines, so the survey may cover little more than half of them. Still unpublished are the exact number of airlines that responded, how many responses came from the same airline, who inside each airline answered, how “no plans” was defined, the base of the timeline question, and which airlines sit in each group.
The presentation that reports the survey also describes TPConnects’ products. A later slide says the company’s Astra platform is powering AFRAA members, with more than 20 API connections to travel sellers and more than 3,000 agencies onboarded on its portals. TPConnects co-authored the survey and sells NDC gateway and aggregation services. That is context for readers, not a finding about the data, and nothing TDN has found suggests the figures are wrong. They have simply been cited widely without the methodology that would let readers weigh them.
What it means for vendors, lenders and agents
Berthé’s prescriptions depend on which explanation is right. He called for modular, phased pathways for smaller carriers, cloud-native solutions that avoid on-premises integration, and pricing calibrated to the revenue of smaller operators. He also said financing and technical assistance from development finance institutions need to extend to digital commercial infrastructure. If the no-plan responses reflect capacity or funding, those measures could move them. If they reflect a commercial decision, they may not.
For a technology vendor, the difference between a group that is undecided and a group that has declined is the difference between a sales cycle and no sale. For travel agencies, it sets how long a GDS workflow must stay in place for African content. Berthé told TDN that any NDC adoption strategy that does not invest in agent training and transition support is “building on an incomplete foundation,” and a long tail of carriers staying on the GDS lengthens that transition.
The data is also more than a year old, and the market has moved. Ethiopian Airlines went live on AirGateway with NDC content on 16 October, including voids, refunds and rebookings. EgyptAir deployed IATA NDC 24.4 in production in July. Kenya Airways began distributing NDC content through the Amadeus Travel Platform in 2025. Those carriers belong to the group that was already moving. Whether the no-plan group has changed since the survey is a question the survey cannot answer.
Until the survey’s authors publish the breakdown, the 36 percent is best read as a flag, not a finding. It shows that a meaningful share of responses report no plan to adopt NDC. It leaves open whether that reflects a commercial decision, a capacity constraint or a funding problem. Berthé argues the last two, and the survey does not separate them from the first.
