The Qatari airline, Qatar Airways, has obtained traffic rights in Congolese airspace and could begin serving the DRC during the year 2024, the Congolese authorities announced on Tuesday March 5.
The convention was signed in Doha, Qatar, during the visit of the President of the Republic Félix Tshisekedi to the Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani.
“As for the agreement that we signed to grant traffic rights to Qatar Airways, we wanted this agreement to be already in force by June 2024 at the latest,” indicated Christophe Lutundula, Congolese Minister of Foreign Affairs, quoted by ACP.
Qatar Airways has expanded its network to 31 destinations in Africa, including Lusaka, Harare, Abidjan, Algiers, Accra, Cape Town, Casablanca, Dar es Salaam, Entebbe, Kilimanjaro, Lagos, Abuja, Nairobi, Johannesburg, Zanzibar, etc.
The emirate would hold a 60% stake in the new Bugesera airport, under construction in Rwanda, and its national aviation company has acquired 49% of RwandAir since 2020.
“During the discussions, it was a question of reviewing the protocols of understanding signed between Qatar and the DRC two years ago.
The two delegations also discussed other issues relating in particular to investments,” underlined the Presidency on X.
These memorandums of understanding, signed on March 29, 2021 in Doha by the Congolese Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Qatari Minister of Transport and Communications, in the presence of President Félix Tshisekedi and Emir Tamim Ben Hamad Al-Thani, concerned in particular the protection of investments between the two countries, the modernization and development of the DRC’s airport and port infrastructure, cooperation in the aeronautics and maritime sectors as well as capacity building of sectoral experts.
