Entebbe named among top cargo handling airports in Africa

Entebbe International Airport was among the top ten African countries (in sixth position) that handled large volumes of cargo (exports and imports) in 2021.

According to the Airports Council International rankings, Entebbe airport handled 65, 115 tonnes of cargo is 2021, coming in 6th position.

Kenya’s Jomo Kenyatta International Airport is ranked first, with 363, 204 tonnes of cargo, followed by Egypt’s Cairo International Aiport with 333,536. Olivier Tambo airport in South Africa comes third with 304, 018 while Addis Ababa Airport is in fourth with 226, 417 tonnes.

Nigeria’s Murtala Mohammed Airport is in fifth place with 204, 649 tonnes.

This comes after the Uganda Civil Aviation Authority last week revealed that 60,637 metric tons of cargo were handled in the FY 2019/20 and 63,978 metric tones of cargo in the FY 2020/21 (25,038 imports & 38,940 exports).

The major exports through Entebbe include flowers, fish, vegetables and fresh produce.

UCAA said cargo traffic was not affected by the COVID 19 pandemic since cargo operations were maintained even during the 2020 lockdown. The major destinations for Uganda’s cargo produce include Europe, Middle East and the far East, among others.

Entebbe International Airport handled 151,653 international passengers (77,056 arrivals and 74,597 departures) in July 2022, an average of 4,892 per day compared to 4,508 per day in June, 4,018 in May, 4,078 in April, 3,670 in March, 3,615 in Feb and 3,566 per day in Jan 2022.

In the Financial Year 2021/22, a total of 1,244,604 international passengers were facilitated through Entebbe compared to 1,728,783 in the FY 2018/19 prior to COVID19, 1,355,772 in the FY 2019/20 and 580,238 in the FY 2020/21, which was adversely affected by the COVID19 impact.

A comparison of the FY 2021/22 passenger traffic performance with that of the FY 2018/19 reflects a 71.9% recovery. In relation to cargo, 64,254 metric tones (40,961 exports & 23,293 imports) were handled in the FY 2021/22 in comparison to 62,121 metric tones in the FY 2018/19.

In 2021, the world’s airports accommodated 4.6 billion passengers, representing an increase of 28.3% from 2020 or a drop of 49.5% from 2019 results. The top 20 airports, representing 19% of global traffic (863 million passengers), experienced a gain of 42.9% from 2020 or a drop of 31.9% compared with their 2019 results (1.27 billion passengers in 2019).