Using drones for good isn’t easy.
There are legal obstacles. Equipment is prohibitively expensive. Skills are scarce. Markets factors favor large internationals over local operators. And safety is a constant concern.
africanDRONE makes it easier for African drone pioneers to do more, for less, while producing better results.
africanDRONE seeks to empower the drone pioneers already living on the continent, by networking them together into a self-help association that can share resources and knowledge. In addition, we aim to use our collective muscle to get better access to markets (for our work), better prices on hardware / software / insurance (through collective bargaining), and share resources (for everything from drones to data-crunching computer servers).
africanDRONE is grassroots.
We don’t impose ‘chapters’ on anyone. We rather work bottom-up, empowering local initiatives or thought-leaders by investing skills, resources and opportunities into them so they can thrive.
Our goal is to support the evolution of a vibrant and diverse drone ecosystem in every country in Africa.
Our founding members having been pioneering civic drones in Africa since 2012, when African skyCAM established the continent’s first newsroom-based drone team in Kenya. We’ve helped shape global discourse, as demonstrated by the 10 million interactions triggered around the world by Unequal Scenes’ footage of urban inequality. We’re pioneering new ways to fight environmental degradation, led by BlastTracker’s work around blast fishing. And, we’re changing the face of disaster management and response through UhuruLab’s mapping work for the World Bank and Tanzanian government.