Drones have catapulted into headlines recently with success stories of essential medical supplies being delivered by air to hard-to-reach areas in Africa.
Countries such as Rwanda and Tanzania often keep low stock because of the high cost of storage, also known as ‘stock outs’. These are countries with poor roads and disconnected communities. During rainy seasons, many of Rwanda’s roads are wiped out and getting health services in an emergency can take hours due to the country’s mountainous landscape.
As a consequence, drone delivery programmes have grabbed top-level interest, with various governments coming on board. The story goes that drone technology can help deliver real change to Africa, and promises more than just freshly-made burritos.
Humanitarian efforts
UNICEF and the Government of Malawi announced in June the launch of an air corridor to test potential humanitarian use of drones. The Humanitarian UAV Testing Corridor will focus on three areas: ‘imagery’ for drones to generate and analyse aerial images during humanitarian crises, ‘connectivity’ for drones to help increase Wi-Fi and phone signals and ‘transport’ for drones to deliver small, low-weight emergency medical supplies, vaccines and samples for laboratory diagnosis.
More widely celebrated in the press, California-based startup Zipline has been delivering emergency blood supplies within Rwanda since 2016. Rwanda’s civil aviation body altered regulations to enable its drones to operate. Zipline signed a deal with the Rwandan government to build a distribution center near the town of Muhanga.
It used to take three or four hours for some doctors in the country to access blood for transfusions during surgery and childbirths. Now, staff can place an order on WhatsApp or via Zipline’s website. A drone carrying plastic sachets of blood flies from the Zipline distribution centre to the clinic in 20 to 40 minutes and drops off the package for the worker to collect. The drones themselves don’t need to land.
Zipline’s success in Rwanda has led to the company now expanding into Tanzania to deliver not only blood, but also anti-venom and rabies vaccines, medications for HIV and malaria, and emergency supplies like sutures and IV tubes.
What must be considered
For these schemes to take off in a major way worldwide, there are some technical concerns that will need to be worked out. Charging, maintenance and operations are all important considerations. Small commercial drones that are battery-operated often have short flight times of 20 to 40 minutes. Their efficiency is also impacted by the weight load they are tasked with carrying. In addition, these programmes will need to take into account the numbers of staff that have to be trained with the right skills to ensure operations run repeatedly and smoothly.
To go further, we must ask whether these governments can really afford the price of drone deliveries. Zipline CEO and co-founder Keller Rinaudo talks about the “entrepreneurial ways” of tackling problems. Though it’s done in a fraction of the time, the cost per Zipline delivery is similar to a vehicle delivery. Rwanda’s government pays Zipline a fixed price per delivery, with a minimum volume guarantee, and is charged between $15 and $45 per delivery, depending on product weight, urgency and distance. In the future, business agreements will need to be examined to balance commercial strategies with a reasonable deal for public services.
A larger point on spending is that drones won’t and shouldn’t do away with traditional infrastructure altogether. On Rwanda, Rinaudo says, “They’re just leapfrogging roads and trucks and motorcycles and going to a new type of infrastructure.”
But what are the consequences of leapfrogging?
Jennifer Forth (@parachute_open) raises some important points in her Quartz article, ‘We haven’t considered the true cost of drone delivery medical services in Africa’.
Forward-thinking steps such as drone delivery programmes can’t take away from the fact that governments must continue to provide basic public goods and services such as medicines and transportation infrastructure. These countries are in need of ambulances, skilled doctors and healthcare workers. And, on roads, money will still need to go into building and maintaining roads, which connect communities, create jobs and allow for people to access markets, selling their produce and labour to earn a living.
It’s promising to see governments embracing work with tech start-ups, and the story of drones delivering life-saving packages is surely one that will be told for years to come. But we’d be wise not to treat these promising new solutions as an easy bandage for more deep-seated issues that a country faces, if tech is to help achieve real change in the long term.
Technology Tree 