…Airports Council International Rankings: Entebbe International Airport listed Sixth Position amongst the Top Ten African Nations that dealt with Huge Volumes of Cargo Exports and Imports in 2021

By Abdul Rahman Bangura–

NEW AFRICA DAILY NEWS (NADN) Freetown, Sierra Leone - This is according to the Airports Council International rankings, Entebbe airport handled 65, 115 tones of cargo is 2021, coming in 6th position.

Kenya’s Jomo Kenyatta International Airport is ranked 1st, with 363, 204 tones of cargo, followed by Egypt’s Cairo International Airport with Airport. Olivier Tambo Airport in South Africa 3rd with 304, 018 while Addis Ababa Airport 4th, with 226, 417 tones. Nigeria’s Murtala Mohammed Airport 5th, place with 204, 649 tones.

This arrives after the Uganda Civil Aviation Authority last week disclosed 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 let out cargo traffic was not included by the COVID 19 pandemic since cargo operations were retained even during the 2020 lockdown. The main destinations for Uganda’s cargo produce include Europe, Middle East and the far East, amongst 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 correlated 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 enabled through Entebbe related 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 dominated by the COVID19.

A comparison of the FY 2021/22 passenger traffic performance with that of the FY 2018/19 evaluates a 71.9% comeback. In connection 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 tons in FY8/19.

In 2021, the world’s airports held 4 million passengers, affecting a boost of 28.3% from 2020 or a drop of 49.5% from 2019 results. The top 20 airports, tonicifying 19% of global traffic (863 million passengers encountered a gain of 42.9% from 2020 or a drop of 31.9% related to their 2019 results (1.27 billion passengers in 2019). 

For New Africa Daily News Abdul Rahman Bangura Reports,  Africa Correspondent