The Monocle Minute

With hefty financial support from Qatar, Rwanda is hoping to become a new African aviation hub. Qatar Airways (QA) is the majority shareholder of an airport under construction near Kigali. Expected to open in 2027, it will be QA’s main base in Africa. Betting on the country’s strategic position at the heart of the continent, the airline is also finalising a deal in which it will take a 49 per cent stake in its flag carrier, RwandAir. This would be a significant step for both the airline and Rwanda’s travel industry.

Africa’s population and economy are projected to grow rapidly over the coming decades. Though the continent only accounts for about 2 per cent of global air traffic today, it is among the world’s fastest-growing aviation markets. However, flying from one African capital to another still too often requires at least one layover, usually in the Gulf, Cairo or even Paris.

So far only Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, has succeeded in becoming a hub for both passengers and cargo on the continent. A focus on connecting regional destinations and joining Star Alliance, the world’s first and largest airline partnership, have helped Ethiopian Airlines to become one of Africa’s most profitable flag carriers.

Landlocked Rwanda is now seeking to emulate and even surpass that success by making Kigali a global hub on a par with Doha, Singapore or Atlanta. The country’s president, Paul Kagame, has been trying for years to draw foreign investment to the city with limited success. His aviation plan will depend heavily on attempts to liberalise travel regulations within Africa. Thirty-seven countries are currently signed up to the Single African Air Transport Market, an African Union initiative intended to bring down costs and barriers. If this plan takes off, the sky’s the limit.

Naveena Kottoor is Monocle’s Nairobi correspondent. This piece features in Monocle’s September issue, which will be out later this week. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.

The torch is expected to be officially passed to Kamala Harris at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, which began yesterday. Just four weeks ago she became the frontrunner in the party’s race to select a nominee after Joe Biden, who was in attendance yesterday, dropped out of the race. In less than three months, Harris will surely be hoping to overcome the same foe who the Democrats feared that Biden couldn’t defeat a second time.

“The reason to have Biden appear on Monday is to get him out of the way,” Scott Lucas, adjunct professor at the Clinton Institute, University College Dublin, told The Briefing. “This way, the Biden legacy doesn’t hang over this convention, at least not the negative aspects.” There has been an extraordinary energy around Harris this past month but political honeymoons do not last long. In a divided country, Harris, whose nomination is expected to be confirmed on Thursday, will need to reach beyond the enthused Democratic base to clinch the presidency in November. That journey starts now.

Tune in to Monocle Radio for coverage of the Democratic National Convention from our US editor Christopher Lord and other correspondents in Chicago.

José Luis Sanz, the mayor of Seville, has threatened to cut water supplies to Spanish landlords who operate short-term rentals without meeting the city’s regulations. “It makes you wonder how reasonable a plan like this is,” Simon Hunter, a Madrid-based journalist told Monocle Radio’s The Globalist. “The mayor’s office says that it has identified 5,000 irregular tourist apartments across the city and plans to cut off water from them – but it can only inspect 10 per week.”

The process would therefore take decades to complete and, as a result, the leftist opposition has called Sanz’s threat a publicity stunt. “The Airbnb model has taken tourists away from hotels and brought them into residential areas,” says Hunter. “This has caused a rise in house prices, gentrification and problems such as antisocial behaviour, noise and crowded streets.” Even so, cutting off water is not a feasible, nor desirable, solution to such problems.

Richard Turley talks to The Monocle Minute about his work as editorial and design director of Interview magazine (founded in 1969 by Andy Warhol and relaunched in September 2018) and his recent redesign of Rolling Stone. Turley is also the founder of creative agency Food, which produces Nuts, a journal of ideas.

Tell us about your work at ‘Interview’.
We wanted to warm up the content and reintroduce some humour and wit in order to make the experience of looking through the magazine a joyful thing. At the time, everything felt a little heavy in the world so we wanted to give some levity to people who choose to pick up the magazine.

What about your redesign of another iconic title, ‘Rolling Stone’?
A lot of my work involves taking old titles that need a little freshening up and some kind of revitalisation. Rolling Stone fell very strongly into that category, a magazine that had a ton of really great content that wasn’t necessarily represented in its pages, it was a bit stripped back. People want to buy a magazine that is packed full of life and ideas. The new issues now feel denser and offer more of a reading experience.

Tell us about ‘Nuts’, the title you produce through your creative agency, Food.
Our second issue is coming out in September. It’s a very personal project and it is all about language and how words modify images. It is also an exploration of the modern-day condition. It sits somewhere between a zine, a book and a magazine. It has no commercial aspirations as it is really just an art project, or as close as a magazine can ever be to an art project.

For our full interview with Richard Turley, tune in to this week’s ‘The Stack’ on Monocle Radio.

Natasha Tripney reports from the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and selects the top theatre picks at the monthlong event. Plus, Robert Bound heads to Hafla, a celebration of Middle Eastern culture at the New Bond Street headquarters of Sotheby’s.