Windhoek
The Arab Republic of Egypt is considering looking into the possibility of having direct flights from Cairo to Windhoek in the near future, towards strengthening the bilateral relations between the two countries.
Although Egypt was among the first African states to establish diplomatic ties with an independent Namibia, there are still areas of cooperation the two countries are not fully exploring. Egypt’s Ambassador to Namibia, Mohmoud Fawzy Abou Dounya, said he was dissatisfied that the current level of bilateral cooperation between Egypt and Namibia has been reduced to the annual exchange of diplomatic pleasantries in the form of Christmas and New Year messages. As such, he said, there were other crucial areas of cooperation, such as civil aviation, that could still be explored, as many treaties were concluded after independence, but lapsed or are either not legally binding. Currently there are no direct flights between Cairo and Windhoek.
Dounya said that during 2000 a delegation from the Egyptian Ministry of Civil Aviation visited Namibia, and together with their Namibian counterpart (Ministry of Works and Transport) initialled two documents on direct flights which never became legal entities. “Those two documents were just initialled and have no final legal signatures. So I have conveyed this discovery to Egypt and informed them what happened between 2000 up to 2015,” he said on Wednesday when Namibia and Egypt signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on tourism.
Dounya said he was still waiting for an update from Cairo on what happened to the two documents.
“I am waiting for suggestions from the Ministry of Civil Aviation on whether there is any possibility of updating the context of those MoUs. If they are satisfied with what is written in them, then I will revive the context with my Namibian counterparts with suggestions on the final signatures of the documents,” he stated.