Ethiopian Airlines Holds Stakes in Six African National Carriers. Namibia Is in Talks to Become the Seventh.

Namibia's Ministry of Works and Transport confirmed this week that it is holding technical talks with Ethiopian Airlines as it tries to relaunch a national carrier, five years after Air Namibia collapsed under billions of dollars in debt.

Ministry spokesperson Jonas Sheelongo said the discussions have been analytical, not binding, and insisted "Namibian expertise and national interests remain central to any future arrangement." The statement followed the leak of an internal memo describing a proposed management contract with Ethiopian Airlines and estimating the new carrier would lose money for at least five years — a document the ministry publicly disowned, calling it unauthorised and warning commentators to "verify facts before publication."

Air Namibia was liquidated in February 2021 after accumulating roughly N$5.4 billion in liabilities and consuming close to N$8.4 billion in state bailouts over the preceding decade, a collapse the government attributed to years of mismanagement. Sheelongo said the current talks are meant to avoid repeating that history.

Ethiopian Airlines holds a 49 percent stake in Malawi Airlines, took a 45 percent stake to relaunch Zambia Airways in 2021, and has built similar hub partnerships with ASKY in Togo, Tchadia in Chad and Ethiopian Mozambique in Maputo, alongside a stake in Guinea's national carrier. In December 2024 it added Air Congo, a joint venture with the Democratic Republic of Congo's government launched under Ethiopian's continental Vision 2035 strategy. Ethiopian nationals run at least five of these carriers as chief executives.

ASKY has been profitable every year since 2017 and was named Best Airline in West Africa in 2023, flying to 27 destinations across West and Central Africa as a strategic Ethiopian partner rather than a majority-owned subsidiary.

Ethiopian Airlines held a 49 percent stake in Nigeria Air, agreed in 2022, with the Nigerian government holding 5 percent and local investors the remainder — a structure critics said could send up to 60 percent of profits abroad. A 2023 launch event used a repainted, briefly-leased Ethiopian aircraft. Nigeria's parliament called the deal a fraud, a Lagos court nullified the sale, and the incoming aviation minister suspended the project, saying a national carrier "must be wholly Nigerian."

No contract has been signed and no equity stake has been proposed in public. The ministry says it will continue technical consultations with both Namibian aviation operators and Ethiopian Airlines before any arrangement is finalised.