How Africa Is Embracing Drone Technology To Solve Its Major Problems.
Recently, the use of drone technology has increased in various sectors in the Africa continent and it has managed to seep into different parts that include, agriculture, surveillance, e-commerce, entertainment, health and more.
Drones as previously made for military specifically for security reasons way back, have now transcended their earlier function. Drones have increased in work to the extent of saving the lives of people by being used for transporting blood from banks to hospitals where it’s necessary together with medical tools when and where needed. Another is how drone has contributed to agriculture space – farm aerial mapping and irrigation cannot also be over-emphasised.
To talk of this, a source of information that was obtained from South African Civil Aviation Authority (SACAA) states that the rate of Remotely-Pilot Aircraft Systems (RPAS) has increased to 663 as the last county in October 2017 as compared to the 216 registered drones in January 2017.
Drone technology has been turned to help protect the Addax Saharan antelopes and other species in Africa’s largest terrestrial park by the government of Niger.
Now let’s take a look at some of the drone technology startups that are using drone to transform Africa.
AeroShutter – Ghana
AeroShutter, a drone service firm founded in 2014 and based in Ghana, is known to be providing aerial services to industries across the African continent. The major target by the company is to provide aerial solutions across Construction as well as Agriculture industries and ran comprehensive tests to offer a top-notch UAV data and image collection, technical analysis services and advanced image modeling to the agricultural industries.
Arone – Nigeria
Arone, a Nigerian drone service firm founded by Emmanuel Ezenwere. This startup is there to transform the personalized drone delivery service to the people of Nigeria particularly to the healthcare service. According to the founder, Emmanuel Ezenwere, his start-up is there to solve problem of accessibility to the medical supplies in the country.
Arone is there to connect the rural and urban health care centres by putting up drone delivery centres at blood banks and medical supplies distribution centres to offer a quicker delivery of vital medical products to rural and urban clinics. This purpose can be achieved by making use of the aerial logistics technology empowered with artificial intelligence and renewable sources of energy.
RocketMine – South Africa
To talk of the first mining company in South Africa to get the full license and certification from the country’s Aviation Authority, there’s no drone technology startup to look to than RocketMine. This drone service firm has been best known for its largest fleet in Africa and has a dominant force in the drone market in Africa.
RocketMine is the main licensed operator of commercial drones in the mining industry of South Africa and provides a professional drone survey together with a mapping services to corporate their customers like that of South32, Anglo American and Exarro Resources on a fixed-term contracts.
Investiv Group Drone – Côte d’Ivoire
Aboubacar Karim, a 23-year-old from Côte d’Ivoire, has made it his mission to put an end to agricultural losses as a result of poor crop management.
“We can’t carry on farming in the same way our grandparents did, using the same hoes and machetes that people have been using for 300 years,” says Karim, who holds a degree in agricultural economics from Canada’s Université Laval.
Karim’s field mapping company, Investiv, launched its first drone service in May 2017. The firm’s six drones – each equipped with multispectral imaging cameras and operated by internally-trained pilots – produce agricultural land-use maps to pinpoint areas of crop disease, poor soil fertility or under-hydration.
The company then analyses the data so that farmers can take personalized, for instance by fine-tuning fertilizer and disease control product dosages or using water and inputs more efficiently.
Metternet – Malawi
The drone startup service firm that is worked with United Nations children’s fund (UNICEF) in 2016 for experimenting on HIV tests in Malawi. This official project between the Malawi government and UNICEF was purposely to help over 35,000 children that were born HIV in 2014.
The drone technology has reduced the time for conducting the tests as against the motorbikes that were previously used to send blood which takes not less than 2 months. Metternet as drone startup in Malawi, raised a total of $16 million in Series A funding that was led by Boeing HorizonX Ventures in June 2018, with the participation from Swiss Post, Sony Innovation fund and the Levitate Capital.
Zipline Drone Service – Rwanda
The Rwandan government in partnership with the U.S based drone startup in 2016, Zipline was to launch the world’s ever first commercial drone delivery service that is going to help transport vital medical supplies such as drugs and injections, blood to its distance hospitals that are having the worst roads.
So far, the start-up has dispatched over 5,500 units of blood products like red blood cells, platelets, and plasma to 12 hospitals without going through the dangerous road network in Rwanda. With the success in Rwanda, the start-up is hoping to expand to Tanzania.
Drone Technology To Be Used for farming in Ghana
In summary, Investiv uses drones to map farmers’ land and help them manage resources more efficiently and here’s all you need to know about How Africa Is Embracing Drone Technology To Solve Its Major Problems.