{"id":2887,"date":"2019-06-03T08:51:19","date_gmt":"2019-06-03T08:51:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/africasustainabilitymatters.com\/?p=2887"},"modified":"2026-01-11T05:30:19","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T05:30:19","slug":"modern-technology-solves-old-problems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/2019\/06\/03\/modern-technology-solves-old-problems\/","title":{"rendered":"Modern Technology Solves Old Problems"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When someone is in need of a medical emergency speed is everything. In sub-Saharan Africa, most roads are unusable during the wet seasons, therefore, medicine cannot be accessed easily. It becomes a challenge to access critical supplies and in some instances, goods fail to reach the market on time so as to get a sustainable income. Investments are being made but it\u2019s estimated to take 50 years in order to catch up. Can there be a better way? Most regions in Africa have excellent communication despite lacking copper lines in the ground. Can this be applied in the transportation sector? Imagine a scenario where a newborn baby in remote areas of northern Kenya is in need of urgent medical supplies. In today\u2019s world, one would place a request via a mobile phone and a request placed immediately. this is the part that works. However, the supplies would take hours or even days to arrive due to factors such as bad roads and this is the part that is broken. To step in the place of infrastructure, some African countries have embraced the use of Unmanned Aerial vehicles popularly known as drones. These devices have changed lives as seen in some East African countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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launching a drone: image source: pixabay.com <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Tanzania, a country whose population according to the United Nations<\/a> stands at an estimated 60 million, is surrounded by rivers and lakes. Most of its population resides in rural areas. The Tanzanian government has embraced the use of drones to solve medical, infrastructure and land issues in areas that have geographical challenges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ukerewe Island located at the midst of Lake Victoria\nis home to about four hundred thousand people. Diseases such as malaria and\ntyphoid are a great threat to the residents and snake bites are also common in\nthe area. Infrastructure<\/a>\nis an issue and accessibility by road takes a lot of time. Easy accessibility\nto the area is by lake in a situation where medical supplies are to be\ndeployed. However, vessels in the lake are not allowed. The medical store\ndepartment in Mwanza which is in charge of supplying medical supplies to the\narea has employed use of drones to improve on the delivery of medical services.\nThe drones deliver blood packs, anti-venoms and spare parts for medical equipment.  This has saved a lot of lives by reducing\nmortality rate as many lives are saved on time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Drone technology seems to offer a solution to Land\nissues and this is witnessed in most parts of Tanzania. They have reduced\nissues on land tenure. This simple technology has an installed camera that\ntakes a lot of images while recording the geo-location of every photograph that\nit takes. People monitoring then unmanned aerial vehicles merge the photographs\nand launch it into another software that merges the images as one. Because of\nthe use of this technology the land tenure team in Tanzania is set to issue over\n300,000 land<\/a>\ntitles to local residents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kenya has also embraced the use of drone technology\nbut is still struggling in terms of the rules and regulations needed in order\nto have effective results. Nairobi is home to an estimated 3.5 million people according\nto world population<\/a>\nreview. Over 300 000 private vehicles go through the central business district\nin Nairobi<\/a>\nevery week. However, there are only 14, 000 documented parking slots. A lot of\nparking revenue is never collected which could be a good economic boost to the\ncountry. Drone technology can go a long way in solving this issue. Jambo pay<\/a>,\nwhich offers a platform for payment of parking fee wrote to Kenya civil\nauthority in 2017 seeking permission to use drones in gathering of parking fees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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traffic jam in Nairobi. Image source:businessweekly.com <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A Kenyan worker who relies on public means to get to work at 8. AM has to leave home as early as 4 AM in order to arrive on time. Traffic updates in the morning radio show mostly include \u201cjam has already started along Thika road\u201d or \u201cif you are getting into the central business district it is advisable to use another route or seek an alternative.\u201d A survey conducted by JICA<\/a> in 2018, indicated a rise in private car ownership in Nairobi higher than any other cities. According to a World Bank<\/a> report of 2014, the value of time wasted in this traffic jams ranges from 0.8 million to over 4 million dollars per day. Picture a scenario where an accident has occurred and patients referred to a hospital that requires access to the capital in order to get blood donations. They may use an ambulance one may say but in a situation where medical supplies are urgently required, it may prove hard with traffic jams playing a key role.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kenya can borrow lessons from Tanzania and have the\nuse of drone technology saving such a situation by delivering the medical\nsupplies to the location other than sending life threatening situations to the\nmercies of traffic. This will reduce mortality rate significantly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, the license and registration rules involving drone technology need to be emphasized and made friendly to the people. Reliance on traditional methods of air traffic controls is still an issue. More or less drone technology offers a modern solution to an old problem. Hopefully, the technology will spread to other regions in Africa. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s choose convenience over the buzz.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When someone is in need of a medical emergency speed is everything. In sub-Saharan Africa, most roads are unusable during the wet seasons, therefore, medicine cannot be accessed easily. It…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":2890,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[111],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-social-responsibility"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2887"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2887\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}