Rwanda has allocated Rwf2.3 billion in the 2024/2025 fiscal year which will commence on July 1, as initial funding for setting up a Drone Operation Centre as the country seeks to develop its unmanned aircraft industry at the same time ensuring its utilisation and effective regulation, The New Times has learned.
The facility will be located in Huye District, Southern Province at an area currently occupied by Huye aerodrome (airfield).
René Kabalisa, the Principal Research and Development Engineer at Rwanda Information Society Authority (RISA), told The New Times that the Drone Operation Center (DOC) project total budget is Rwf13.4 billion, and is expected be completed in 2026.
He pointed out that it will be able to accommodate more than 3,000 drones, depending on the size.
"The Drone Operation Centre will be receiving drones of all types, including large drones the size of a helicopter, drones with a wingspan of 18 metres, 20 metres," he said.
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According to the Ministry of ICT and Innovation, the Drone Operation Center is part of Rwanda's aspiration to become an ICT hub.
It indicated that the centre will have a battalion of drone students, designers and pilots, and will accommodate drone manufacturing, testing, training, and research and development activities. It is also expected that the centre will provide space for recreational and hobbyist activities where inexperienced people can fly drones in a safer environment.
Angelos Munezero, Public Digitisation Analyst at the Ministry of ICT and Innovation told The New Times that it is a centre of excellence where all activities related to drone innovations must be carried out, including testing, and development, before scaling up.
While there are innovations in the drone industry, Munezero said that there was a need for a space where they can be tested, indicating that, for instance, a person cannot fly a drone in Kigali for testing purposes as there might be risks including the drone in question falling onto people.
"It was imperative that the country allocates an area to such tests so that we can have more innovations," he said, indicating that Zipline, and CHARIS UAS are among players in the drone industry so far.
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For drone innovations to serve people, he said that there was a need for a place where their proof of concept is done, indicating that proof of concept refers to showing that innovation is possible and does not pose a risk.
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"So, the government had to put in place an enabling environment facility where any person who has any drone-related innovation goes to work from so that we are not just a country which calls people to come and test in Rwanda, but also have our products [drone innovations] we make within the country, test them such that we can export them," Munezero said.
"We need to have a safe place like Huye [based Drone Operation Centre] where one first tests, and after being convinced that something works and there is no risk, things are going well, he/she can go ahead to offer the service," he observed.
Drones can offer benefits apart from the transportation of medications and swine semen [to ease artificial insemination in pigs] which is done currently, Munezero said, indicating that they can be used in conservation such as supporting anti-poaching efforts [through surveillance], as well as inspection in hard-to-reach areas.
This can be done such as through sending a drone to an area affected by disasters, and it takes imagery that informs people of the state of the situation [for evidence-based intervention].
With novel technology, Munezero said that an artificial intelligence (AI) enabled drone can inspect a farm and tell the owner what a crop needs - either spraying a given pesticide or fungicide, or irrigation.
"It can give information that a farmer needs such that in the coming days, we could be seeing drones spraying rice plantations, instead of having 100 people doing that yet it is not good to inhale the pesticides," he said.
