Drones Doing Good Alliance

💡 Imagine if just three steps could help African entrepreneurs use drones to tackle local challenges, scale their impact, and create future-ready jobs across the continent. Well... We have good news, great news, and an exciting opportunity to share. ➡ The Good News: We’ve identified exactly what these three actions are. ➡ The Great News: The first—and arguably hardest—action is already complete. ➡ The Opportunity: We will begin building an alliance to accomplish the remaining actions together in November. So here are the 3 actions: 1️⃣ Build a drone that’s cost-effective, has safety-by-design features, top-tier flight capabilities, and is easy to build and maintain locally. We needed a money-maker drone. One that would be simple to use and robust. The key to scaling impact is that operations need to be profitable. So we needed a drone that could halve mapping time and double, even triple, business profits—and we’ve done it. Thanks to the collaboration between my co-founder Dr. Hans-Peter Thamm and leading engineer Thomas Strieker, this first critical step is complete 🎉 The Simukai drone is here and does all this and more. The video below by Compass Media captures this well and we were able to measure the potential impact thanks to our Phase 1 Alliance funding partners Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, The Lemelson Foundation, and Azurit Foundation gGmbH. NEXT... With this foundational step complete, we’re now ready to tackle the final two actions in tandem: 2️⃣ Facilitate local repair, maintenance and manufacture of the drone in key African countries. To fully leverage drone technology, local repair and maintenance are essential. This is also an opportunity to expand local capacity and create jobs. In the medium term, our goal is to form partnerships with local companies to make manufacturing in Africa a reality. 3️⃣ Provide business development support and capacity building to help local companies maximize the drone’s impact. This is where we see the magic of tangible, systemic change unfold. By working closely with businesses, we’ll equip them to explore and optimize drone use across sectors like agriculture, disaster management, infrastructure, tourism, natural resource management, and other climate solutions. Creating our next Alliance On November 13th, we will begin building our new Alliance for the second and third action points. It is called the Business Booster Alliance. If you’re interested in being part of this journey and want to learn more just direct message me the word SIMUKAI.

Drones for Agriculture | Technical Highlights How can Simukai be used to strengthen the agricultural sector? Drones provide a fast, efficient, and cost-effective way to capture high-resolution imagery and data, offering valuable insights for various applications in agriculture and land management. While there are many ways that drones can be used in the agricultural sector, some of the main use cases include: 1) Crop Health Monitoring → Assessing plant health → Detecting diseases, pests, and malnutrition → Monitoring crop vitality, phenology, and biomass → Detecting weather-related damage 2) Yield Estimation and Resource Management → Estimating crop yields → Managing irrigation control → Monitoring fertilizer, herbicide, and pesticide application → Observing leaf area and biomass 3) Livestock & Land Management → Monitoring livestock → Detecting land erosion and water issues → Managing land registration → Remote crop and livestock surveillance 4) Precision Agriculture & Automation → Crop spraying for fertilizers and pesticides → Aerial seedings → Harvesting orchard fruits → Evaluating the success of measures (fertilizing, spraying, etc.) 5) Irrigation → Managing irrigation by assessing the demand → Detecting defects in the irrigation system → Avoiding salinity For drone businesses to be successful in the agricultural sector, the TCO (total cost of ownership) of drones is a critical factor. Here is where Simukai has big advantages. Simukai is a high-performance but very robust VTOL drone that was engineered to be a cost-effective tool, easy to maintain, and safe by design. With an outstanding 2.5-hour flying time and the ability to map between 200-2000 hectares an hour, Simukai can map more farms faster than traditional multirotor drones, dramatically reducing the operating costs associated with drone mapping. Plus, its high payload allows for the use of multiple high-quality sensors, LIDAR, and several optical, multi-spectral and thermal cameras at the same time You can learn more about the Simukai drone and how drones are being used in the agricultural sector in this report:  https://lnkd.in/ef857nWw Thanks to the team of the Drones Doing Good Alliance, The Lemelson Foundation, Tendai Pasipanodya, Villgro Africa, Thomas Strieker, Kat James, Cara Nemelka, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit GmbH, Azurit Foundation gGmbH

How do we better support women working in the drone industry? Like many STEM fields, the drone industry has a significant gender disparity, with only a small percentage of female professionals working in the sector. A survey conducted earlier this year found that in the U.S. only 8% of FAA-licensed drone pilot are women, and this percentage is likely even smaller in other countries around the world. For the past year, I’ve worked as a women’s inclusion consultant for the Drones Doing Good Alliance’s Business Booster Initiative | Phase One. The Business Booster is an initiative designed to help local African drone companies grow faster and scale their impact through access to the Simukai drone and business support that includes training, workflow optimization, and access to new clients and opportunities. As part of the DDG’s Business Booster Initiative, we want to build in additional tailored support for female participants to ensure that they have what they need to build profitable, sustainable businesses. Why do women need additional support? Because they face a unique set of challenges. From potential clients asking to “speak to the boss” (meaning ‘man’) when they are talking to a female founder to facing repeated unconscious biases that women are not technical to the fact that only a tiny percentage of VC funding goes to female founders, women in this industry face a unique set of challenges when building their businesses in comparison to their male counterparts. During this initial pilot phase of the project, we’ve conducted extensive research with women working in the drone industry in Africa to better understand the unique challenges they face and identify solutions to help them thrive. As part of the Business Booster Phase 1, we conducted: → Needs Assessment Survey with 64 women working in the drone industry from 11 different countries. → Conducted one-on-one interviews with female founders working in the drone industry in Africa. → Held focus groups with female founders to better understand their unique challenges and brainstorm solutions. → Conducted interviews with other drone training programs, innovation accelerators, coaches, and VC’s that fund female founders to understand industry best practices in promoting gender equity. I’ll share more about our specific findings in the coming week, but in the meantime, you can check out our Women’s Inclusion Note here: https://lnkd.in/dYfQu6dd Huge thank you to everyone who so graciously shared their stories and provided input to this project. Your insights will prove invaluable in ensuring that the Business Booster Initiative can meaningfully support women working in the drone industry.

Access to affordable, high-performance drone technology has the potential to be a game-changing advancement. The Drones Doing Good Alliance’s Simukai drone is transforming the way operators work by reducing the time it takes to map in half. This means more projects, higher efficiency, and greater profitability for local businesses. To truly understand Simukai’s impact, Villgro Africa has conducted a comparative study with three Kenyan drone companies in the agricultural sector as part of the Business Booster Phase 1 Alliance. The aim was to quantify the ways this cutting-edge drone technology can boost businesses. We focused on these key metrics: ✅ Turnaround Time ✅ Cost-Effectiveness ✅ Profitability ✅ Return on Investment ✅ Job Creation Potential We learned that Simukai can: ➡ Reduce project time by up to 56% ➡ Slash operational costs by up to 63% ➡ Boost profitability by up to 3x ➡ Pay for itself in as little as 6 months for companies with large-scale operations ➡ Improve the quality and quantity of decent future-fit jobs The numbers speak for themselves: Simukai is a catalyst for building profitable, sustainable businesses. Want to know more about the Business Booster Initiative and the phase 1 results? See the report here: https://lnkd.in/dBFhBUMt Benjamin Barwa Winnie Kibiru Barney Otieno Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH The Lemelson Foundation Drones Doing Good Alliance Kenya Flying Labs Four Hundred Feet

Business Booster - Drones Doing Good e.V Introduction SIMUKAI - Advanced VTOL UAS Drone technology has the potential to transform many industries in Africa, ranging from agriculture and conservation to logistics and disaster management. However, when I first started working with drones on the continent over two decades ago, I noticed that the drones being developed were not fit for purpose for many of the rural locations I was operating in. Not only were drones prohibitively expensive, but they were also quite complex and very difficult to maintain locally. I realized that if we want to increase civil adoption of drones for good, we need a drone that is: - Cost-efficient to build - Robust and reliable - Has extended flight times - Easy to operate - Easy to maintain and repair - Has a low total cost of ownership  - Has an interchangeable payload - Safe by design Plus, we need a drone that can be produced in Africa to reduce costs associated with shipping and customs and to make them easier to maintain and repair locally. That’s why we’ve created Simukai. The design was was made by an exceptional engineer which has lots of experience in designing manned aircraft and build it perfectly after our specifications. The collaboration with him is fantasic. Thanks to Thomas Strieker . Simukai is a high-performance, multipurpose VTOL drone specifically designed to be manufactured and used in Africa. The specs: - Can map between 200-2000 hectares per hour with a working speed of 17 m/s to 20 m/s - Flight time of up to 2.5 hours on one battery charge - Weight of the frame is 12,5 kg  - Total takeoff weight is 25 kg - It can carry 7 kg for 1h or  - 2 kg for 2,5 h powered by batteries  - Can operate in the rain Two versions available: - Fibreglass - Gridded out ouf foam with carbon tubing for enforcement We believe that by giving local drone businesses access to affordable technology, we’ll be able to help businesses scale both their impact and profit. We just wrapped up phase 1 of the Business Booster Initiative to assess the impact of using Simukai on local drone businesses in Kenya. A big thank you to our Dream Team. The Alliances we build only work thanks to partnerships like ours Maggie Flanagan, Cara Nemelka, David Brand, Benjamin Barwa, @Daniel Nyutu, Kat James, Kush Gadhia, Lea Buck, Cleopa Otieno, Stefan Engels, Brigid Gachoki, Hazel Wachira, and, very important, Thomas Strieker Read a summary of the results here: https://lnkd.in/evTaNG35

The results are in! We are excited to announce that a recent study by Villgro Africa revealed that our long-range drone, Simukai, cut mapping time in half, a sizable improvement that could lead to a doubling, and in some cases tripling, of profits. For those of you unfamiliar with the Drones Doing Good Alliance, we’re on a mission to create future-fit jobs by supporting profitable, impactful African businesses. How? We build Alliances that collaborate to impact on three areas: - Affordable drone technology tailored to local needs - Targeted business support to help drone companies scale - An enabling environment through improved regulations This is how we can level the playing field for African entrepreneurs. The Business Booster is an initiative designed to help drone companies grow faster and scale their impact through access to our Simukai drone and business support that includes training, workflow optimization, and access to new clients and opportunities. In Phase 1 of the Business Booster, we partnered with three drone companies in Nairobi, Kenya, working primarily in agriculture. The pilot showed undeniable results: the Business Booster can transform businesses.  Phase 1 was made possible by the exceptional support of our Phase 1 Alliance partners: Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, The Lemelson Foundation, Azurit Foundation gGmbH, Villgro Africa, Four Hundred Feet, Kenya Flying Labs and Camzai. Now, we’re establishing an Alliance for Phase 2 of the Business Booster, a two-year initiative to scale our impact and support African drone businesses, creating future-fit jobs, fostering local manufacturing, and driving positive ripple effects across industries. Learn more about the Phase 1 results on our website. I will attach the executive summary in the comments below. A big thank you to our Dream Team. The Alliances we build only work thanks to partnerships like ours Dr. Hans-Peter Thamm, Maggie Flanagan, Cara Nemelka, David Brand, Benjamin Barwa, Daniel Nyutu, Kat James, Kush Gadhia, Mary Kiragu, Lea Buck, Cleopa Otieno, Stefan Engels, Brigid Gachoki, Hazel Wachira.

The Drones Doing Good Alliance team is so excited to be kicking off #Kenya Drone Week! If you're attending any of the following events, make sure to come say hi 👋 We're looking forward to a week of innovation and collaboration.

At the Drones Doing Good Alliance, we’re on a mission to create future-fit jobs that are driven by impactful and profitable African businesses. We believe that by using a systematic approach that levels the playing field for local entrepreneurs, we can unlock the full potential of drones for good in Africa. With that, we’re excited to introduce the Business Booster Program! The Business Booster program is designed to give local drone businesses the resources and support they need to build profitable, impactful drone businesses. The program will include multiple tracks for different types of drone businesses, such as hardware manufacturing, software development, and drone service providers. The goal is to provide participants with training, mentorship, and resources necessary to create thriving businesses. One of the ways we do this is by giving program participants access to the Simukai drone, a high-performance and affordable fixed-wing drone that can be manufactured and maintained locally. A couple of months ago, we launched Phase 1 of the Business Booster in Nairobi, Kenya, where we are working with three local drone companies in the agricultural sector. During this initial pilot phase, our goal is to measure and quantify how the Business Booster program can enhance drone businesses and conduct research to inform the program design for Phase 2. You can learn more about the Drone Business Booster here: https://lnkd.in/ezGMPAbP Make sure to follow the Drones Doing Good Alliance to hear about future program updates. #dronesforgood #dronebusiness #businessbooster

And we’re live! We’re excited to announce the launch of the Wakanda Beyond Regulations Toolkit. The Wakanda Beyond Peer Action Group is a network of nine African Civil Aviation Authorities and Ministries that have come together to explore solutions to increase safety and security while creating an enabling environment for drone technology. Over the past year, CAAs from across Africa have come together to experiment with and discuss potential regulatory solutions, exchange ideas, and help inform the development of drone regulations that enable safe and impactful drone operations. Through this engagement dozens of resources were developed to help enable safe drone operations. Explore the Wakanda Beyond Resource Toolkit here: https://lnkd.in/eKZyKzDU Our first phase was made possible by an Alliance of partners, including the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office’s Frontier Tech Hub,  Smart Africa’s Digital Academy and Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH. Interested in getting involved? Join the Wakanda Beyond Alliance of partners for Phase 2. Reach out to Tendai Pasipanodya over LinkedIn for more information. #dronesforgood #droneregulations #smartregulations