Kenya Airways is on a mission to prove that sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) can be made in Africa, potentially giving it a new way to seek financing to cut its emissions.
The Nairobi-based airline to run four return flights mainly using a SAF blend. In 2023, Kenya Airways became the first African carrier to operate a long-haul flight from the continent with SAF supplied by Eni SpA and imported from Italy. But buying and shipping SAF from overseas is prohibitively expensive for African airlines; the green fuel already costs at least twice as much as conventional jet fuel.
Operators on the continent can face costs as much as five times higher compared with jet fuel because of a lack of local production, according to Kenya Airways Chief Executive Officer Allan Kilavuka. African passengers are generally unwilling to pay extra for lower-carbon flights, Kilavuka said, “so we need to find a way to reduce SAF production costs and hopefully get subsidies from organisations or governments.”
Kenya Airways will also run SAF-powered flights from Nairobi to Amsterdam, London and Cape Town. At the European airports, it will refuel with SAF, but use regular jet fuel on the flight leaving Cape Town. The airline aims to use fuel with 2% SAF for all its flights initially, gradually increasing to 10% by 2030.
“Once we prove the concept, we believe that we’ll be able to attract green funding,” said Hellen Mwariri, the carrier’s chief strategy and innovation officer.
Producing SAF locally would potentially unlock funding from domestic lenders, as well as global funds, and would reduce the cost of complying with future regulations increasing the use of SAF over time. The International Air Transport Association has set a 2050 net-zero target for global aviation, relying on SAF to deliver as much as 65% of the emission reductions.
For its demonstration flights, Kenya Airways is using SAF produced by Bleriot Group. Bleriot holds a 15-year lease on 6,000 acres (2,428 hectares) of land formerly used by Base Titanium Ltd, a mining company that wound down operations after depleting the ore. The land isn’t suitable for farming food, the company said, so using it to grow crops for fuel is a good alternative.
Bleriot aims to scale operations from roughly 28 metric tonnes a year at this “prototype stage” to supply the Kenyan airline, other African carriers, and eventually export SAF to Europe as well, said Chief Executive Officer Serguei Poppeleer. The company is still in the process of calculating how much smaller the carbon footprint of its fuel is compared with traditional jet fuel, he said.
The cheapest feedstock for SAF production today is used cooking oil. But in Africa, too little waste cooking oil gets collected, and where collection does take place, like in South Africa, it’s typically exported to Europe for diesel, said Farai Chireshe, a Cape Town-based energy and sustainability expert.
The lack of used cooking oil has prompted African producers to grow more crops for fuel, raising concerns the trend could impact food security. “The challenge has always been how to find the perfect balance,” said Kenya Civil Aviation Authority Director General Emile Arao.
Even globally, SAF use remains negligible, accounting for just 0.3% of jet fuel demand in 2024. Supply more than doubled to 1mn metric tonnes in that year, with demand expected to reach 0.6% in 2025, according to BloombergNEF. That growth is fuelled by blending mandates in Europe and the UK, tax credits in the US and demand from corporate customers willing to pay higher ticket prices to reduce their carbon footprint.
One incentive for African airlines to invest in SAF is getting ahead of regulation overseas, according to Mesfin Tasew, chief executive officer of Ethiopian Airlines. The continent’s biggest airline signed an agreement last year for Satarem America to produce SAF in Ethiopia’s Afar region.
“We have to prepare the airline to use an increasing proportion of SAF-blended fuel from our home base,” Mesfin said. “For airlines that fly within Africa, it may not be a big issue until this requirement becomes mandatory” for regional flights, he said.
Without a regulatory framework in Africa around SAF production and mandates requiring airlines to use it, it’s unlikely the green fuel will take off in the region, says Raphael Kuuchi, an Accra-based aviation consultant and former IATA vice president for Africa.
“Because demand is non-existent, production remains small-scale and experimental,” he said.