The result of their deliberations will be presented to the African Union summit in Addis Ababa next week.

It’s been 12 years since African leaders signed the Yamoussoukro agreement on liberalising air transport over the continent.

The AU Commission headed Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma is prioritising this as part of the continental body’s Agenda 2063.

The ministers meeting in South Africa represent African countries with flagship carriers or air traffic hubs.

Their hostess, Transport Minister Dipuo Peters says South Africa identifies air transport as a major instrument fighting the triple evils of unemployment, inequality and poverty.

Africa is becoming the third fastest growing market for air transport yet continental regulations governing aviation lag behind the rest of world.

She says African countries  must forge aviation links with each other before looking further afield adding that Africans have traditionally found the quickest way of getting to each other,

Why then are Africans forced to travel to Europe before they can reach  Tunisia and other parts of their own concontinentcontinent.

She says liberalisation  between Africa’s 12 countries with airlines will provide an extra 155 000 jobs and $1.3 billion in annual GDP.

It will give seats to five million passengers currently denied these by restrictive practices.

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Nevertheless the country’s transport minister says the 677 road accident fatalities since December the first is unacceptably high if South Africa is to meet its target of halving the number of road deaths by 2015.

Last year, reckless, negligent and drunken driving killed 43 South Africans on the country’s roads every day. The toll is considerably higher than the total number of South African deaths in World War II.

This lethal statistic of 32 road deaths per 100 000 of population is twice as high as that in the United States and five times more than Australia’s.

South Africa has the greatest death toll of 36 countries polled by the International Transport Forum.’

Transport Minister Dipuo Peters says 1376 people died in the traditional holiday period between December 2013 and the first week of January this year.

Government’s engaged in a zero tolerance policy towards moving traffic violations.

The death toll so far this December is 35 percent down on last year.

However it’s feared the fatalities will escalate when the roads are filled after New Year with people going home from holidaying in the coastal cities.

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