Red Line is a spin-off of Afrotech, an initiative of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne whose goal is to boost Africa's development by pioneering advanced technologies at a massive scale. Once the Red Line system is operational, the organization plans to set up a Blue Line. This will be the business-to-business branch of the project, that will deliver electronics, spare parts and e-commerce for commercial rates. Profits will be used to sustain and expand the Red Line.

Zipline
The Silicon Valley startup Zipline has also chosen Rwanda as its first base to set up a drone delivery system. But the project is slated to go live much sooner. Last week the five-year-old company announced it will start drone runs to deliver blood products in July of this year. Working together with Rwanda’s National Center for Blood Transfusion, it will make between 50 and 150 deliveries a day.

Rokel Delivery Services
A third initiative comes from Moses Bangura, an engineer who designed a drone delivery system as part of his PhD in aerial robotics at the Australian National University in Canberra. Bangura aims to deploy civilian drones first in Sierra Leone and then in other African countries.

“It’s very reliable and robust, an open source system which anyone can develop”, Bangura told the news oulet MG Africa. “I thought about giving back to Sierra Leone and Africa, where I come from… one thing I realized is there is a very poor healthcare delivery system.” The engineer is in a hurry, this March he founded the company Rokel Delivery Services, and by March next year he hopes to have his drones in the air.