Digital transformation is reshaping industries globally, and aviation is no exception. In the aerospace and defense (A&D) sector, digitalisation has become essential for improving efficiency, accelerating product development, and managing increasingly complex manufacturing and operational processes. Yet, despite significant investments, many organisations struggle to achieve the expected return on investment (ROI). These challenges are particularly pronounced in African aviation, where airports and aviation authorities operate in highly complex environments but often with limited financial and human resources.
Insights from Siemens’ “Five Levels of Digital Transformation Maturity” provide a useful framework for understanding how aviation stakeholders — especially airports — can approach digital transformation more strategically. The framework emphasizes that true digital maturity is not about isolated technology adoption, but about fundamentally rethinking how organisations operate and deliver value.
Understanding digital transformation maturity
Digital transformation maturity refers to how deeply digital processes are embedded across an organisation’s operations. At the lowest level, organisations focus on basic digitisation — converting paper-based or manual processes into digital formats. While this improves efficiency, it does not fundamentally change how the organisation works. Higher levels involve integrating systems, leveraging data across functions, and ultimately using digital twins, advanced analytics, and automation to optimise decision-making and performance.
Siemens’ roadmap outlines five progressive stages, guiding organisations from siloed digital tools to fully integrated, intelligent, and adaptive enterprises. A Siemens-sponsored survey conducted across the Aviation Week network reveals that many aerospace companies remain stuck in the middle stages — having invested heavily in technology but lacking the organisational alignment and data integration needed to unlock full value. This finding resonates strongly with the African aviation context.
African aviation context: Complexity meets constraint
Airports are among the most complex business environments in any region. They function as ecosystems involving airlines, ground handlers, security agencies, regulators, retailers, and passengers — each relying on mission-critical systems that must operate continuously and reliably. In Africa, this complexity is compounded by infrastructure gaps, fragmented legacy systems, and constrained budgets.
Unlike large aerospace manufacturers or global hub airports in developed markets, many African airports operate with relatively small IT teams and limited capital expenditure capacity. Yet, they face the same expectations around safety, security, punctuality, and passenger experience. This creates a delicate balancing act: operating a growing number of critical systems while maintaining stability, cybersecurity, and resilience.
Applying the 5-level maturity model to African aviation
For African airports and aviation authorities, the Siemens maturity model offers a pragmatic pathway rather than an all-or-nothing transformation. The focus should be on progression, not perfection.
At early stages, airports can prioritise standardising and digitising core operational processes such as asset management, maintenance scheduling, and passenger flow monitoring. Moving to intermediate levels requires integrating these systems so data can flow across departments — linking operations, finance, and planning. This integration enables better visibility into costs, performance bottlenecks, and capacity constraints.
Advanced maturity levels — such as predictive analytics and digital twins — may seem ambitious, but they are increasingly relevant for African aviation. For example, predictive maintenance supported by data analytics can reduce aircraft and infrastructure downtime, while digital replicas of terminals or airside operations can help airports test expansion scenarios without costly physical trials.
Strategic imperatives for African airports
Given resource constraints, African airport IT functions must adopt targeted strategies. These include prioritizing high-impact use cases, embracing modular and scalable digital solutions, and investing in skills development to ensure technology adoption translates into operational change. Partnerships — with technology providers, regional peers, and academia — can also help spread costs and accelerate learning.
Ultimately, digital transformation in African aviation is less about adopting the latest technology and more about building maturity over time. By aligning technology investments with clear operational goals and following a structured maturity roadmap, African airports can improve efficiency, resilience, and passenger experience — while ensuring that limited resources deliver measurable and sustainable value.
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Ekelem Airhihen, an accredited mediator, has an MBA from the Lagos Business School. He is a member, ACI Airport Non-aeronautical Revenue Activities Committee; his interests are in market research, customer experience and performance measurement, negotiation, strategy and data and business analytics. He can be reached on ekyair@yahoo.com and +2348023125396 (WhatsApp only).
