In the 1960s it was a common thing to pack your bags, get to the airport and eventually to the aircraft without being stopped by any one other than the customs, immigration and airline personnel. Those luxuries have however faded with time thanks to the ever evolving threats against civil aviation.

Over the years civil aviation has had to deal with threats such as aircraft hijacking, sabotage of aircraft/airports and armed attacks aimed at passengers.  These threats are being addressed by a myriad of physical, technical and legislative countermeasures. Passenger to baggage reconciliation, effective landside/airside barriers, effective access control, screening of passengers cabin and hold luggage, cargo and mail security  are just but some of the measures put in place to provide security to civil aviation.

These measures have had their successes in bringing down the number of security incidents in recent years.

Recent years have had a fair share of incidents that have brought about a paradigm shift on our approach to managing aviation security. Perhaps the events of 11th September 2001 in the United States brought about a baptism of fire for the industry, causing a review of probably all measures that hitherto existed. What was meant to be one of those traditional hijack situations turned out to be an attack of using aircraft as weapons of mass destruction.

Barely a year later, the use of explosives hidden in shoes of a passenger infamously known as the "shoe bomber" was a an eye opener on the lengths terrorists can go to conceal prohibited items utilizable for perpetrating their heinous acts. Perhaps this tells you where to direct your wrath when a security officer wants you to remove your shoes at a security checkpoint.

Much recently and perpetrated by an African, was the attempted bringing down of Northwest Airlines en route from Amsterdam to Detroit by Umar Farouk Abdul Muttalab using plastic explosives in December 2009. The not-so-funny part of his mission was how he concealed explosives in his underwear. The examples cited above just highlight some of the emerging threats to civil aviation. These form part of the steadily growing list of emerging threats that among others include Man Portable Air Defense Systems (MAN-PADs), cyber terrorism, electronic jamming of aviation systems, suicide bombing and the enemy within, also known as the insider threats. As the list of these threats keeps on growing, more and more measures, resources and technology have been employed to counter them. Terrorism for example has moved on. Gone are the pistols, revolvers and grenades. They have been replaced by weapons from household products; small in size, homemade, improvised, disguised and adapted or commercially manufactured stealth weapons made for no other purpose than compromise security, as well as cleverly designed, concealed, improvised explosive devices (IEDs).

Perhaps before looking at the solutions to these threats it is imperative to look at where we stand as African States. It is sad to note that many African states still believe that threats are not directed to Africans and therefore they should not use their meager resources to protect "others". This only serves to worsen the state of affairs. Kenya, for instance has learnt that it is now a direct target by AL-Shaabab terrorist group (Somalia based). This in extension means that African countries under the African Union banner similarly stand under threat from such terrorist groups. It is an open secret that African airports are ill-funded and where this is not the case there lacks political goodwill to address aviation security. Aviation security has not been considered a priority spending area. Indeed it is the cost of these strategies that bog many African countries. It is even worse off if the cost of keeping the strategies afloat do not match the benefits from aviation itself. After all who would want to invest in a venture that does not break-even? The lack of adequate knowledge and capacity to understand and deal with the threats is the major impediment to fully administer adequate and appropriate countermeasures for the threats.

Airports have also been faced by the challenge of infrastructural development and maintenance which more often than not take up huge chunks of their budgets. Airports however have to look at the need for strategies based on risk management that basically looks at what would happen if things went wrong. This will enable them to relook at their priorities.

Kenya Airports Authority is a state-owned corporation with the mandate of developing, managing and maintaining civil aviation airports in Kenya. Being a country that relies heavily on tourism, floriculture and its strategic geographical location as an aviation hub, Kenya treasures the immense contribution of aviation to its gross domestic product. It is therefore ideal to look at the strategies and efforts of the Kenyan airports in protecting the aviation industry from the new and emerging threats.

Notable of Kenya Airports Authority was the shift to new management structures that lay emphasis on performance management as opposed to the old bureaucratic systems that hitherto existed. This has evidently borne some fruits as seen from the steady growth of the organization's key statistics on revenues, passengers and cargo. The authority through coordination of government agencies and stakeholders has been able to provide layered security measures that minimize the chances of perpetrators succeeding in their intentions. For instance, the Immigrations Department is well within the International Civil Aviation 2015 deadline of issuing machine readable passports. Such a move will greatly reduce cases of fraudulent travel documents being used by would-be-perpetrators of terrorist activities. Additionally, there exists a strict vetting procedure for airport workers applying for airport movement permits. This serves as one of the remedies for dealing with insider threats.

Technology has proved to be an all round effective measure to tackle the dynamics of the emerging threats. To achieve this, Kenya Airports Authority has invested heavily in state-of-the-art security equipment such as X-ray machines, explosive trace detectors, full body scanners and surveillance systems. This has and will continue to be enhanced following deliberate benchmarking by the organization on the industry's international best practices in countries like South Korea, Singapore and Israel.

The benefits of training in aviation cannot be overlooked. The airport community at large has been and will continue to be entrenched in the security system through the security awareness programs. Remember airports are more than just terminals and runways. They are busy commercial neighborhoods; and that means we must be vigilant everywhere there is a possible threat. But more specifically the organization has devoted a substantive budget to training of its key security personnel in both theoretical and practical course work. The security staffs are well trained to understand exactly what they are up against…. "If you do not know what you are looking for you will definitely not find it". Kenya Airports Authority is in the process of implementing a Secure Freight Program which is now at an advanced stage. On completion Kenya will be the first country in the region to boast of this system. A great plus indeed.

The airport authority has played a pivotal role in the regional integration process in East Africa. The efforts of Civil Aviation Authorities and airport authorities from the member States, i.e Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi, brought about the birth of Civil Aviation Safety and Security Oversight Agency (CASSOA). CASSOA has the responsibility of harmonizing regulations, standards and procedures for the member states as far as aviation safety and security is concerned. This in the long run will enhance positive sharing of resources in the region.

The strategies outlined above are just but a few that African States can adopt in ensuring that they keep pace with the ever evolving threats in the aviation industry.

African countries need to understand that their nations are their most valued treasure; and should therefore not treat things that concern their motherland lightly.