Well we're all here for a profit.
Some well made points but I'm still not sure that they wouldn't have been more appropriate on a thread of their own or at least based on an accident where more facts were known.
Answer me this though: Let's take TCAS11 as an example although no relevance to the recent tragedy. Excellent system but less valuable in most of Africa than 1st world environments due to the fact that not all aircraft are transponder equipped. So, if a 1st world operator sends out an aircraft equipped with TCAS11 and crew trained to use it and then the same aircraft crashes into an a non transponder equipped local aircraft, are you going to blame the 1st world operator?
Are there not political and environmental pressures at work here that are outside of the scope of the operators or pilots? I'm not trying to let dodgy operators off the hook, merely trying to be practical.
Should we do sim training that includes semi literate controllers babbling in any language other than English with QNH's that are wrong and faulty nav aids maybe?
Accident investigators trained to deal with hostile areas, and looted crash sites?
Realistically it'll take a lot more than IATA, the UN and a bunch of well meaning NGOs to change Africa.
As pilots we can only really refuse to fly overweight, unequipped and under trained etc.. and on that note...we should do that little we can.
My 2 cents on the matter.