By Andrew Ehrenkranz 

A single-engine Cessna carrying two Kenyan government ministers  crashes into the Masaii Mara hillside about 100 kms (60 miles) from Nairobi, killing everyone on board.  In the Sudanese capital of Khartoum, a Sudan Airways Airbus A-310 en route from the Syrian capital of Damascus explodes on landing at Khartoum International Airport. Miraculously, almost half of the passengers survive and manage to escape the burning fuselage. And this was just yesterday, Tuesday, June 10.

Africa is, far and away, the world’s most dangerous place to board an aircraft. According to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), the number of major accidents per million takeoffs in Africa amounted to 4.31 in 2006, compared to a worldwide average of only 0.65. According to Giovanni Bisignani, the head of the IATA, Africa's accident rate is still nearly six times the global average.  This sorry record has led to the European Union including 74 African airlines on its 91-strong global blacklist of planes barred from EU air space. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the country's vast size and severely-limited road network makes it heavily dependent on air cargo, all 54 of the country's airlines are banned. With 20 crashes since 1996, including a Hewa Bora Airways DC-9 that killed 40 people, including 37 on the ground when it overran the runway in the east Congolese city of Goma on April 15, the D.R.C. has the worst  safety record in sub-Saharan Africa. In the United States, only two African airlines qualify for landing rights.

What causes the crashes? A combination of poor aircraft maintenance, old fleets, short runways and harsh weather environments all contribute. African governments are starting to fight back: in June 2007, a group of continental leaders approved AFRO-CAA, a Windhoek, Namibia-headquartered aviation agency designed to monitor and enforce air safety standards across the continent. The year-old body is modeled after the American Federal Aviation Agency and Europe’s Aviation Safety Agency. It's certainly a step in the right direction, but AFRO-CAA clearly has its work cut out if there are to be fewer of yesterday's nightmares in Africa.