The International Air Transport Association (IATA) on Friday predicted that airlines operating in Nigeria and other African countries would continue to experience weak growth in international passengers' traffic.

This is contained in IATA global passenger traffic results for August issued by its Director-General, Mr Tony Tyler.

"Adverse economic developments in parts of the continent, including Nigeria, the largest economy, suggest that Africa will continue to experience weak growth at best.

"African airlines' traffic rose to 3.6 per cent in August, year-to-year which was the slowest growth among the regions, but the second consecutive month of growth.

"Capacity increased to 2.9 per cent with the result that load factor improved 0.5 percentage points to 75.2 per cent," the report said.

It said that apart from the African situation, there was a strong growth in air travel demand for both domestic and international traffic globally.

It noted that the total revenue passenger kilometres (RPKs) rose by 7.1 per cent compared to last year.

"August capacity (available seat kilometres) increased by 5.9 per cent and load factor rose 0.9 percentage points to a record 84.7 per cent