SITA Plans Fresh Return to Nigeria After Four Years
SITA President for Africa and Middle East, Mr. Selim Bouri
Chinedu Eze
IT provider for the air transport industry, Societe International Telecommunication Aeronautiques, (SITA), has expressed willingness to return to Nigeria four years after it ended a contractual relationship with the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), which manages about 26 of Nigeria’s airports.
Before SITA left, it was offering seamless facilitation solutions (Common Use Terminal Equipment (CUTE) for the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos.
SITA delivers solutions for airlines, airports, aircraft, and governments. It co-innovates with customers to provide more seamless, safe, and sustainable air travel.
SITA President for Africa and Middle East, Mr. Selim Bouri, who confirmed the company’s fresh plan to return to Nigeria, told THISDAY that the company would be happy to resume business in Nigeria. He described SITA as a very special company within the aviation industry, adding that SITA looks forward to returning to Nigeria.
“We will be more than happy to come back to Nigeria and work with the authority if they want us to do so. You know, our ambition is to make sure that the travel remains smooth and efficient and safe, especially for Africa. I was born in Algeria, so I am African, and Africa for me, is key. Aviation is not a luxury for us. Aviation is a necessity and this can work only if we put the right technology behind it because the technology will do and will compensate sometimes what you cannot do with a lot of amount of money because there are problems of financing.
“So, the best way, the smarter way to move forward is to take what you have in terms of infrastructure and try to make it better. The best way to do it is by providing the right technology. We are not talking about the technology that is not something that is not for Africa. It is actually for Africa. It is a very advanced technology, but we have the right financing approach to make sure everyone can use it and scale it up. As I said before, we are not a private company. We are a special company. We serve the industry. So, the more people can travel, the more we are happy,” Bouri said.
According to him, SITA is everywhere in Africa. It has its presence in every country that has a large international airport or a large international airline, disclosing that SITA has three sets of solutions.
“We have the airport solutions where we serve more than 1,500 airports around the world. When we are talking, we are talking about touching points, we are talking about check-in solutions, we are talking about passenger processing solutions, we are talking about airport optimisation solutions, we are talking about all the IT that you don’t see behind the scenes to make sure everything runs smoothly. The biggest airport where we are in Africa is probably in South Africa.
“We work also in Angola, we work in Egypt, in Morocco, in Algeria, in Tanzania, in Ethiopia, I believe 38 countries and more. It is the datacom, the messaging, the VHF networks that we have our own networks,” Bouri further said.
SITA is owned by airlines, so, the organisation was created by the airlines and owned by the airlines. SITA is unique in the fact that it is not a private company; it is owned by the aviation industry and it is the only company in the world that is like that and it is also the only company in the world that is actually serving the three segments which is the airport, the airlines and the government for the border solutions, he added.
Bouri also explained that its systems have security provisions that are technology driven and part of its services even in Africa incorporates security provisions, noting that there are different aspects of technology driven security system, which includes cybersecurity and physical security.
“The physical security obviously is linked to the infrastructure. Such is not peculiar to Africa; it is global but we see this a lot in Africa, obviously. If the infrastructure of the airport itself is not managed in the right way, that will provide a security challenge. Now, cyber security is not the biggest challenge in Africa as per our survey. It is the second. The first one is, again, passenger processing. But for that passenger processing to be trusted by all the authority, obviously, we need to provide the right level of security and our job is to provide the right level of cyber security and the right level of IT protection so that the authority can trust the tool and use them, especially for biometrics and passenger processing so that the overall system can be easier.
“In Africa, more than 75 per cent of the job is about passenger processing. It is about managing the saturation of the airport, and it is also about managing the borders, the visa, and the controls. You know one of the biggest issues we have in Africa, many airlines serve Africa and it is not only the airlines also, the passengers.
“It is about using biometrics, e-visa and electronic travel authorisations. All of these technologies are provided by SITA, and we are really number one when we get to that. We are serving more than 70 countries, 68 or 70 countries now, yet in Africa this is activated in the whole continent,” he explained.
Bouri reiterated that if FAAN became interested in SITA’s return, it would be willing to do so because the company remains the biggest service provider globally. SITA works with the biggest airports in the world.
“We work with Dubai airport. We work with the airport in Qatar, we are one of the biggest players in all the Saudi airports, in Abu Dhabi airport, in many airports around the world. We have the technology and we have the experience and we have been present in Africa since the beginning to provide the right solutions with the right economical concept and not only at the airport because when we look at the airport, we need to look at the three segments of the airport.
“We are talking about the passengers in the airport itself. We are talking about the airlines that will be using the airport and we are talking about the borders that are in the airport here. We are the only player in the market that can serve the three and make them all integrated together. And this is something we want to bring to Africa and we will be happy to bring it to Nigeria,” he further said.
Recently, SITA acquired CCM, a world-renowned expert and leader in the design, production and creation of airport interiors. Speaking on the acquisition, Bouri said: “Today, when we have a saturation of airports, the only way of making them better is to do technology and to put in the technology. Now there is even a smarter way. If you go back and you know that we are going to improve the existing infrastructure with technology, but we know that at a certain moment we will need to build new infrastructure. And the best way, sometimes, I mean, the old way of doing it is you build an infrastructure, you start with the civil work, the design of the infrastructure, and at the second stage you come with the technology. From the moment you design the airport, from an infrastructure and physical point of view, you take into account the technology. This is the reason we acquired CCM.”
He explained that CCM remained involved in the design stage of the airport before the deployment of technology and that by acquiring CCM, SITA could extend its services to include design, like designing the check-in counters, the lounges and that while looking at the architectural design, SITA would also add technological design, adding that SITA has been operating for 75 years.
