IN just a few years, drone technology has developed in leaps and bounds. It all started as a military tool with the sole aim of saving pilots’ lives in combat.
Once it found use in the civilian world, it has developed so fast from crop aerial spraying, surveillance, deliveries, photography, topographic surveys and simply as a hobby by the now so-called dronethusiasts!
A drone or Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) as the name suggests is an unmanned and remotely controlled by a “pilot” to perform various aerial manoeuvres and functions as described in the various uses.
The use of drones surprisingly dates back to the early 20th century with the invention of the winged aircraft which changed everything for manned and unmanned aircraft.
The Wright brothers pioneered the first aircraft in 1904 and 16 years later Great Britain developed the first pilotless winged aircraft.
The use of drones took off literally speaking during World War II with improvements in technology to highly sophisticated military drones during the desert war and to this day.
The jump into civilian use of drones has seen some really interesting ventures, as mentioned such as crop spraying, surveillance, deliveries of medical supply to remote hard to reach places, topographic surveys, aerial photography and just as a hobby for flying enthusiasts.
In Malawi, drone technology has been taken to a whole new level or should I say “higher heights.” Drones are being deployed to deliver essential medicines, medical samples and light-weight equipment to farflung hard to reach areas.
This has greatly eased the accessibility to these remote areas making work for medical staff and other personnel a lot easier.
Malawi is the first country in Africa to have a Drone and Data Academy, were students learn not only how to “pilot” the drones but how to assemble and maintain the drones the whole works!
This is very encouraging and should be replicated in other countries on the continent teaching young Africans 21st Century skills in drone flight and data analysis.
Closer to home, other uses such as traffic surveillance on our streets for accident prevention and rapid response should be seriously pioneered by the Road and Traffic Safety Agency (RTSA) and also the Zambia Police Service in combating crime.
Not long ago, the Director and Chief Executive Officer of RTSA was quoted as being extremely concerned about the amount of money (in the order of K3 billion) the health sector spends annually in providing healthcare to road traffic victims, money of which could be channeled to developmental programmes if only people could adhere to traffic rules, I couldn’t agree more with him.
Drones in this case would be able to relay information in real-time on traffic accidents (in association with ambulance service), road traffic jams and other impediments on our roads.
Drones can also be deployed on vast construction sites to aid project managers and engineers to manage sites in that drones would relay real-time information for rapid decision making and project monitoring.
The survey industry would greatly benefit from the drones in topographic surveys, aerial photography and powerline surveys, the list is endless.
Drone technology is here to stay and developing at a very fast rate, we need to embrace it and do so now.
*Eng. Julius Kazembe-Lungu is Technical Director, JKL-Associates.
