African airlines flew into a world that had not been designed for them. The routes, regulatory frameworks, aircraft markets, and financing structures of global aviation were built by and for the colonial powers. Decolonization did not simply reset the board. The Problem of Flying traces the histories of Air Afrique, Ethiopian Airlines, and East African Airways as they navigated this system in the decades after independence: competing for routes, acquiring aircraft, managing debt, and arguing for a more equitable international order.

Drawing on extensive archival research across Europe, Africa, and the United States (including a year as A. Verville Fellow at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C.) the book recovers the economic and political logic behind decisions that have been too easily dismissed as failures and asks what African aviation can tell us about the postcolonial world economy more broadly.

The Problem of Flying is in progress. Fingers crossed for a 2027 publication date.