Having already launched operations in three states in Nigeria, drone logistics company Zipline has now set its sights on covering the whole country.

The American drone company has said it is working with health authorities and the government of Nigeria to expand medical delivery by drone operations beyond just the three states of Kaduna, Cross River and Bayelsa.

Zipline’s Senior Vice president on partnership, Caitlin Burton, says Nigeria has a huge population, which can be leveraged upon to introduce drone-based medical logistics to address some significant healthcare delivery issues affecting the country.

“Zipline infrastructure is meant to cover entire geography and when we can do that, we make sure that we are truly equalising health care services for everyone, doing that state by state in Nigeria could take a long time and it also puts a big burden on the state to negotiate contract by contract in service delivery,” says Burton.

“The goal of going to the national level and working with the Federal Ministry of health is to make it easier for states to adopt these infrastructures.

“You have some very tech minded innovation focused modernizing leaders in different states of Nigeria and the goal now is to move to the National level and turn in international infrastructure, so we are not just going to state by state but we can make it easier for all the states to adopt the infrastructure.”

Covering a whole country with drone-based medical delivery services would not be a new thing for Zipline; as the company already covers almost the whole of Rwanda in east Africa. The country is also well on its way to covering the whole of Ghana too.

The company’s other operations are in Cote d’Ivoire and Kenya.

“Currently we are working with three states and if we are able to expand that to multiple states over the next few years and if we are able to do that, we will have a health care population that is prosperous, able to engage in economic activities either in urban or rural areas,” said Gbolayan Fagbure Zipline Director of Sales and partnership.

Some members of the community in North Central Nigeria who spoke to local press welcomed the new initiative, saying it was a positive step forward in healthcare delivery in the country.

As told by Mr Abdullahi Idris, a community head in the area; “We are grateful for this company; it is a blessing to our community. They have been with us for the past two years and we have had a peaceful relationship.

“We have had a good working relationship with the company, the community and the people and the medical supplies they give us has helped us and we are grateful,” 

In April this year, Zipline became the first delivery drone company to cross one million autonomous deliveries to real customers, with current statistics having it that a Zip makes a delivery somewhere in the world every second.

Their current operations in Nigeria have seen the company delivering over 1.5 million vaccine doses, reaching thousands of children.

The drone company’s Nigerian journey began its medical logistics deliveries to remote hospitals and medical facilities in Kaduna, Nigeria in June 2022 before expanding into Cross River and Bayelsa the same year.

The drone delivery company also operates in North America and Asia, in countries that include the USA (Zipline’s headquarters) and Japan

Aside from national government, the company has also worked with private organisations that include Walmart, Pfizer, Toyota; as well as NGOs and some other large health systems and government agencies around the world.