Johannesburg, South Africa: The announcement by the Faculty of Law at the University of Pretoria of its partnership with the McGill Institute of Air and Space Law is, on balance, a welcome and timely development. It arrives at a moment when Africa is steadily aligning itself with the promise of a continental single air transport market, and when questions of regulatory coherence, institutional capacity, and legal imagination are becoming unavoidable.
From a higher education perspective, this collaboration signals an important shift. Aviation (and increasingly space) law has long sat at the margins of African legal scholarship, often treated as an exotic elective rather than a core component of public international law, trade, infrastructure development, and economic integration. UP’s move is therefore not merely about institutional prestige; it is about signalling that aviation law belongs squarely within Africa’s development discourse.
Filling a Growing Academic Vacuum
The timing is also significant. With the recent departure of Prof Philippe-Joseph Salazar, Distinguished Professor of Air Law at the University of Cape Town, a noticeable gap has emerged in South Africa’s already limited pool of senior scholars dedicated to aviation law. In that context, the UP-McGill partnership helps to stabilise a fragile ecosystem and ensures that postgraduate students and emerging scholars are not left without intellectual homes in this specialised field.
Yet, this also highlights a deeper structural concern: aviation law expertise in South Africa remains thinly spread. Outside of UP and UCT, formal offerings are rare, with a notable exception being the elective aviation law module embedded in the LLB curriculum at the University of Fort Hare. This narrow base is at odds with the complexity of the sector and the ambitions many African states hold for aviation-led growth.
Esoteric Knowledge, Real-World Consequences
Aviation law is not simply another regulatory niche. It is an esoteric field, demanding fluency in international conventions, technical standards, safety oversight, liability regimes, air services negotiations, and institutional practice. This knowledge is rarely found, and where it exists, it is often siloed between lawyers, engineers, aviators, economists, and regulators who seldom speak the same language.
That reality matters. Weak legal capacity translates directly into poorly negotiated air service agreements, fragile safety oversight frameworks, and limited influence in global norm-setting forums. Against this backdrop, the UP-McGill collaboration can be read as an attempt to rebuild epistemic depth, particularly at postgraduate and doctoral level, where Africa has historically been under-represented.
Aligning with ICAO’s NGAP Aspirations
There is also a clear connection to the aspirations of the International Civil Aviation Organization, particularly its Next Generation of Aviation Professionals (NGAP) initiative. ICAO has repeatedly warned that the sustainability of global aviation depends not only on pilots and engineers, but on lawyers, policymakers, and regulators who understand the system as a whole.
Partnerships such as this one respond directly to that call. By strengthening research capacity and advanced training, they contribute to building a pipeline of African professionals who can operate confidently at national, regional, and international levels. However, NGAP is ultimately about scale and inclusion. One partnership, no matter how well designed, cannot carry the burden alone.
The McGill Pedigree and the South-North Dynamic
McGill’s involvement brings undeniable goodwill and pedigree. The Institute of Air and Space Law has, for decades, shaped global thinking in the field, producing graduates who occupy senior positions across regulators, airlines, and international organisations. Access to that intellectual tradition, networks, and methodological rigour is a genuine asset for UP and for the continent more broadly.
That said, South-North collaborations must be approached with care. The risk is not overt domination, but subtle agenda-setting: whose research questions matter, whose regulatory experiences are treated as “case studies,” and whose norms are taken as default. For Africa, the challenge is to ensure that such partnerships do not simply reproduce global orthodoxies, but instead foreground African operational realities -fragmented markets, developmental carriers, infrastructure constraints, and unique public-interest considerations.
A Contested Higher Education Space
This development also unfolds against a backdrop of intensifying institutional competition. Universities are increasingly positioning aviation and aeronautical studies as strategic growth areas. At the University of South Africa, aviation and aeronautical studies form part of the institution’s Ten Catalytic Niche Areas, with formal programmes under development, including an MPhil, an LLM by research, and a PhD in aviation law. These moves suggest that aviation law is no longer peripheral, but part of a broader contest over who will shape knowledge production in this space.
Competition, if managed well, can be healthy. It can diversify offerings, stimulate research, and widen access. But it also raises concerns about duplication, uneven quality, and the temptation to chase branding over substance. Aviation law cannot be taught meaningfully without sustained engagement with regulators, industry, and international institutions. Anything less risks producing credentials without competence. Drawing from my experience as a commercial pilot, a businessman and a professor; and given the ongoing deliberations amongst my fellow aviation lawyers in higher education, it is safe to conclude that the current competition is healthy and balanced.
Looking Ahead
The UP-McGill partnership is, therefore, best understood as both an opportunity and a test. It offers a chance to deepen Africa’s legal capacity in aviation and space governance at a critical juncture. At the same time, it challenges South African higher education to think more systemically: about collaboration rather than isolation, about African-centred scholarship, and about building a genuinely interdisciplinary pipeline of expertise.
If that balance is struck, this initiative will not merely fill a vacuum: It will help redefine the field.
Prof Angelo Dube (Commercial Pilot) is a Chief Executive Officer at Flying Jurist, and founder of the Aviation Indaba. He is also the President of the Society for International Aviation Law. Prof Dube doubles up as a Professor of International Law and Acting Director of the School of Law at UNISA, where heads the Aviation Law Working Group – a consortium of pilots, aviators, researchers and lawyers who research in various aspects of aviation law. He writes here in his personal capacity.
