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"While South Africa has a well-developed air transport system, this is not true for many parts of Africa," said IATA director-general Giovani Bisignani.
He said governments were not making "strategic investments" to support the aviation industry and were also not re-investing taxes and charges.
At many airports, the runways, airfield lighting, weather information and navigation aids were not up to standard.
While the world bank had spent $30bn on infrastructure in Africa, only $800 000m of this would be spent on aviation, Bisignani said.
Africa carried 4.5% of the world's airline traffic but had 25% of the total accidents, he said.
Airlines were "bleeding red ink" and had lost $36bn between 2001 and 2004.
The good news was that passenger traffic had increased 8.3% this year.
"But the problem is that the fuel (price) is robbing our profitability."
Bisignani added that the proposed tax on airline tickets to fight poverty was nonsense.
"The travel industry is the backbone of many countries in Africa, and it is not in the best interest of Africa," he said.
