The aviation field generally attracts more investors than  African scholars, particularly scholars of the Law. While few have sought to pursue this field of Law, even fewer have taken the tough decision to embark on a doctoral thesis. William Kiema not only did this, he has now completed his PhD in Air Law at UCT - and will be graduating on 3 September 2024. 

William Kiema is a 30-year old Kenyan who will be only the second PhD graduate to come out of the Faculty's Air and Aviation Law Programme. The programme is led by Distinguished Professor Philippe-Joseph Salazar, who also supervised William's doctoral research and his thesis titled Open Skies for Africa: A Principled Approach to the Implementation of the Single African Air Transport Market. 

William achieved his Bachelor of Laws at the University of Nairobi (Kenya) in 2018, and then completed his Master's in Law at UCT as a Mastercard Foundation Scholar (a merit-based scholarship granted to promising African students). William’s passion for and commitment to the creation of a stable and properly regulated African airspace alerted him to the gaps in the African Civil Aviation industry and so, as a legal scholar, he sought to understand better the Aviation industry from a legal perspective. This brought him back to UCT Law, and in January 2021 he was admitted to the University of Cape Town’s Faculty of Law to pursue his PhD.

William's interest in aviation stems from his childhood, and he remembers that growing up in his home town in Kenya, he would see planes fly overhead as he stood in awe and wonder at "the kind of magic that kept the big birds from falling off the sky". Like any other child with a vibrant and curious mind, though, William’s professional preferences swung between being a medical doctor, a lawyer, a pilot and an engineer. “Well," says Kiema, "I became a doctor - not a medical doctor but a Doctor of Philosophy in Law, guiding pilots and other aviators in the legal intricacies in what is arguably one of the most regulated industries in the world."

Armed with the desire to undertake research and also to share his knowledge of Air Law, William has pioneered UCT Law's new professional short course on Fundamentals of Aviation Law, which has attracted aviation law practitioners, non-lawyers, and senior executives and managers from the aviation industry (including civil aviation authorities, airports, air navigation service providers, airlines, international and regional aviation bodies, government officials responsible for civil aviation and the general consumers of aviation services). Chief among the objectives of this short professional development course, offered by the Faculty's Law@work unit, is to provide an overview of air service agreements, open skies agreements, traffic rights, the legal and institutional framework of international aviation, and the roles and functions of principal organisations involved in the regulation of the aviation industry. The course also aims to equip participants with a contextualised operational perspective of Aviation Law.

* information about this short course on Fundamentals of Aviation Law can be found on the Law@work website.

In addition to pursuing his PhD and sharing knowledge about Aviation Law, William has consulted for leading law firms in Kenya on aviation law-related matters and has trained civil aviation representatives from Kenya and Nigeria on aviation and air law. William is also a Partner at PMAK Africa Law, a boutique law firm in Nairobi, Kenya, and heads up the PMAK Aviation Law Department.