Need to fly on business to Africa? The trouble-free World Cup tournament in South Africa convince you that it's time to plan an African vacation? Well, you can't get there from here.

Astonishing for an industry that has universal pretensions, U.S. airlines simply haven't cared much about Africa in the last generation. Without spending too much time in the past, let's just say that Pan Am was the last American airline with a substantial Africa network. And it dropped most of its Africa service long before it collapsed in 1991.

Among U.S. carriers today, only Delta and United Airlines even fly to the continent with their own aircraft. And United's sole African foray, from its hub at Washington's Dulles Airport to Accra, Ghana, has been operating for less than a month.

Without a stable core of Africa-based carriers to pick up the nonstop slack, U.S. business travelers headed to the continent usually end up changing planes in Europe, making a connection over London (on British Airways), Paris (on Air France), Amsterdam (on KLM), or with the German airline Lufthansa. Also emerging as an option: The three fast-growing Gulf carriers (Emirates, Qatar, and Etihad) offer good connections to many Africa destinations through their respective hubs in Dubai, Doha, and Abu Dhabi.

"Traveling through Europe to Africa means you spend two nights sleeping on airplanes," explains Linda Hightower, who's logged 20 years on the road as a high-tech executive for several global corporations. And she knows African travel as few Americans do. She's been based near Cape Town, South Africa since 2008, and she's been flying to, from, and around Africa for six years.

"Flying to Africa is hard enough without adding an extra day to your travel because the airlines won't fly nonstop," Hightower says. "Getting to Africa is unlike anything else I've ever experienced. You have to have a siege mentality."

U.S. airlines haven't served Africa in recent years for the same reason U.S. corporations have been reluctant to do business there. It's complicated, since post-Colonial Africa has been slow to develop the governmental institutions that respect private enterprise. It's expensive, since infrastructure is iffy, financing is dodgy, and many basic manufactured goods need to be imported. It's dangerous, with tribal factions, tinpot strongmen, and many flavors of insurgencies fighting for control and influence. And while Americans tend to say "Africa" as if it is a united market, it is actually a vast continent with a panoply of regional differences and an undefined consumer culture.

Still, the game is changing. Although mostly out of view of the American business community and media outlets, African economies are growing rapidly. It is rich in natural resources, many African nations have embarked on massive infrastructure and building projects, and the continent's consumer markets are growing. China has descended on the continent and struck creative (if one-sided) deals to help development. Africa is coming out of recession faster than Europe or the United States. And while it currently represents only about 5 percent of the global passenger market, Africa's passenger counts are growing faster than almost anywhere else.

In other words, it's not your grandfather's Africa, and at least one U.S. airline has noticed.

"If you look at the economics, there's a lot of business travel to Africa now," Delta Air Lines vice president Bob Cortelyou told me last year. "Minerals, oil, infrastructure; they are all compelling reasons to go. And as we saw the traffic fatten, we thought there was an opportunity."

To go along with its global expansion elsewhere, Delta planned a massive jump in nonstop flights to Africa from its hubs in Atlanta and New York's Kennedy Airport. Although its first flights to Africa didn't launch until December, 2006, Delta announced a huge tranche of new flights meant to begin last year. There would be new service to places like Luanda, Angola; Malabo, Equatorial Guinea; Abuja, Nigeria; Nairobi, Kenya; and Monrovia, Liberia. The service would have buttressed Delta's nascent Africa network, which already included flights to Johannesburg, South Africa; Dakar, Senegal; Accra, Ghana; Lagos, Nigeria; and Cairo.

"Every country has a different mix of traffic," Cortelyou said at the time. "It isn't one size fits all. There are a few more challenges than flying elsewhere, but the reward outweighs the risk."