Thrilled to see the groundbreaking impact of the #SIMUKAI drone! In this rapidly advancing industry, this "Bird" soars above the rest, unlocking limitless possibilities. A key question in agriculture, particularly in low-income countries, is how smallholder farmers can gain access to such transformative technology. Simukai’s capability to scan vast areas at high altitudes with its powerful sensors means it can cover entire villages and multiple farms in one flight. This collective approach can dramatically reduce costs for communities working through cooperatives to access crucial drone-driven data insights. Hats off 🖖 to the Drones Doing Good Alliance led by Tendai Pasipanodya and Dr. Hans-Peter Thamm, your team and everyone who contributed to this inspiring study!
💡 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.
