{UAH} Let our skies be full of drones carrying drugs - Comment -
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Let our skies be full of drones carrying drugs - Comment
Last Tuesday, many clever men and women gathered at the IBM Research Africa colloquium at the Catholic University in Nairobi.
The event had an intimidating title, "Africa in the New Era of Cognitive Computing." Well, for those of us fellows who failed maths and science in school, cognitive computing means using computers (or better software) to understand human behaviour in order to find ways of delivering services (transport, health, education) better.
At these meetings, you always have those precious moments when someone drops something profound — very casually. One panelist did that when he said drones could be a game changer for Africa.
A couple of us sat up when he said that. "How, surely?" we must all have been thinking. He explained that he was not speaking about those American-type military drones. He was thinking of civilian versions.
One of the biggest problems holding back Africa's prosperity, he said, was infrastructure. Well, we all know that. However, he seems to have been thinking harder about it than most of us.
Cargo drones, he suggested, could short circuit Africa's wretched roads, decayed railways, broken bridges. Since they can land anywhere (some types can land on water), drones could deliver goods, medicines, food to places that have bad roads or none quickly and help create immense new wealth.
Think of vast roadless Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). That is perfect drone country. There are also other benefits one could think of.
The cost of doing business would fall dramatically. A drone flying from somewhere in Nairobi to Kampala will no longer have to stop at half a dozen roadblocks to pay the police bribes.
There will be no conniving driver who will throw boxes of your soap and sacks of your rice off the back of the truck somewhere along the way as the cargo moves from Mombasa to Kigali.
If there are any two places in Africa where cargo drones can easily be piloted, I think it is in Kenya and Rwanda. Kenya has profit-hungry business people who can throw money at it, and the pioneering tech spirit to make it happen.
However, things in Kenya have become hobbled by red tape and the dead hand of politics is beginning to strangle many otherwise inspired initiatives, the best examples being the standard gauge railway and the primary schools laptops project.
The other place the cargo drone can happen easily is Rwanda. It is a more decisive and disciplined environment, and policy and initiatives don't fall hostage to vested interests the way they do in Kenya, Uganda, and to the ruling Chama cha Mapinduzi in Tanzania.
At the colloquium, Dr Bitange Ndemo, former permanent secretary for Information and Communication in president Mwai Kibaki's government, said that God burdened Africa with so many problems, in order to give us as many opportunities to find solutions to them.
It is takes a special type of optimism and faith to believe that. As PS, Ndemo was one of Kenya and Africa's leading ICT evangelists, and his absence is being felt today as projects that he championed, like the technology city Konza, slowly die off.
However, if he is right, then perhaps the drone was meant to be Africa's chariot, after all.
Charles Onyango-Obbo is Nation Media Group's executive editor for Africa & Digital Media. E-mail: cobbo@ke.nationmedia.com. Twitter: @cobbo3
http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/OpEd/comment/Let-our-skies-be-full-of-drones-carrying-drugs-/-/434750/2253570/-/12n78da/-/index.html
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