Speaking as a panellist at the first African Air Transport Convention and Expo 2026 in Lomé, Togo, FAAN Managing Director and Chief Executive Mrs Olubunmi Kuku rejected calls from various quarters for the establishment of new, standalone aviation financing institutions dedicated to the African market.
Kuku argued that access to capital is no longer the primary bottleneck choking African aviation infrastructure development. Instead, she identified a severe deficit in structural project preparation, market-risk management, and cross-border continuity as the real barriers preventing existing capital from flowing into African airport and aviation projects.
The Case for Embedded DFI Desks
"I know I've heard quite a lot of talk from different people around setting up different sort of financing institutions," Kuku told the high-level panel. Rather than creating new institutions — which takes years to establish, capitalise, and operationalise — the FAAN chief proposed a more direct solution: inserting sector-specific aviation experts directly into active Development Finance Institutions through Project Preparation Facilities.
This collaborative approach, she argued, would allow financiers to work hand-in-hand with airport operators to structure bankable projects that account for the entire end-to-end aviation value chain — from land acquisition and construction through to commercial operation and revenue model — rather than presenting lenders with projects that fail due to structural weaknesses that experienced aviation sector specialists would have caught early.
FAAN's PPP Credibility — The MMA2 Resolution
To demonstrate that FAAN is ready to match private capital with institutional credibility, Kuku announced that the long-contested Bi-Courtney Aviation Services concession contract for Murtala Muhammed Airport's Terminal 2 — a dispute that has been one of the most publicised and damaging examples of PPP failure in West African infrastructure — has been fully renegotiated and resolved at the Federal Executive Council level under the current administration.
"I'm happy to say that within this administration, we've done quite a bit of work in renegotiating the contract for the concession. It's now been resolved at the Federal Executive Council level," Kuku announced. The resolution, she said, sends positive signals to both local and international investors interested in Nigerian aviation infrastructure through PPP arrangements — removing a decade-old overhang that had made sophisticated international infrastructure investors cautious about Nigerian airport concessions.
Rail into the Terminals and MRO Ambitions
Kuku also disclosed that FAAN is actively exploring public-private co-financing models for intermodal transport projects in Lagos, including an extension of the Red Line rail project into MMIA's terminals — a development that would create the kind of multimodal airport connectivity that currently distinguishes leading African hubs in Addis Ababa, Nairobi, and Casablanca from Lagos.
On MRO, Kuku acknowledged that Nigeria's absence of comprehensive C and D check maintenance capacity — which forces Nigerian carriers to ferry aircraft abroad for heavy maintenance at significant cost — remains a key structural weakness. FAAN's plan is to create a sustainable maintenance ecosystem through collaboration with investors, state governments, and original equipment manufacturers, retaining within Nigeria revenue that currently flows to MRO facilities in Europe and the Middle East.
