Training session on the DJI Agras MG1-S spray drone against malaria, in Tanzania.
When the specially-designed DJI Agras MG1-S drone rose over a rice field in Cheju, Tanzania and started to deploy its payload, it was the culmination of years of effort towards one goal: fighting malaria.
Every year in the eastern African country of Tanzania, malaria infects more than 10 million people killing 80,000 – and until now eradication efforts have been largely focused on costly and time-consuming manual spraying.
“Entomologists Bart Knols from Radboud University in the Netherlands and Richard Mukabana from the University of Nairobi in Kenya and social entrepreneur Guido Welter – also from the Netherlands– came up with the idea to use drones to spray a non-toxic, biodegradable control agent called Aquatain AMF in rice paddies (breeding habitat) to kill mosquito larvae,” said Leka Tingitana has lived in rural Africa for more than 10 years and is the managing director of Tanzania Flying Labs, which trains locals in new technical and business skills, finds new uses for robots and incubates new businesses.
“Aquatain AMF is already a proven mosquito larvicide and we are therefore ready to scale-up its use in Zanzibar and beyond,” Tingitana said, adding that by eliminating the mosquitoes that carried Malaria, this would lead to lower malaria prevalence and increased farm yield from the improvement in productivity.
Bart Knols, a medical entomologist and one of the co-founder of the anti-malaria drone (AMD) project says the field trials of the airborne spraying drone in October were the culmination of years of effort that began with a message to his website.
“I was approached on the contact form of my website by Guido Welter, a German national, who remembered spraying of pesticides in German vineyards with helicopters during his youth and was following the developments in drones technology closely,” Knols said, “He also had a missionary uncle in Brazil that came with stories of malaria. He connected the dots. Guido and I met in a roadside restaurant and it all started from there.”
Knols says that after that initial meeting in 2015, they got the ball rolling and in 2017 they launched a crowdfunding campaign that would raise 20,000 Euros. They initially tried to start the trials in Kenya but Knols said after a terror attack in Nairobi, drone permits became “impossible” to get, so they reach out to partners in Tanzania instead.
“The group reached out to us from our proven track record in managing and documenting new use-cases in ‘drones for good’ in April and the rest is history.”
The project’s leaders say this is the first-time ever use of drones to apply a biological control agent against mosquitoes anywhere in the world.
On the ground level, the trial was a joint effort between Abdullah Ali representing Tanzania’s Ministry of Health; drone pilot trainer Eduardo Rodriguez, Fundraiser/co-coordinator Guido Welter, the Zanzibar Malaria Elimination Program, the State University of Zanzibar and of course, the local community in Cheju.
Professor Richard Mukabana from the University of Nairobi and AMD served as the project’s medical entomology expert and scientific adviser.
Tingitana, said funding came from the AMD in the Netherlands and China’s DJI Company who developed the specialized drones capable of spraying the thick, honey-like Aquatain AMF.
Tingitana said there were many applications for drones in east Africa.
“The land surveying and remote sensing capabilities of drones are the most pertinent aspects of drone technology in the African context at the moment,” he said, adding that the biggest example in Tanzania’s fast growing cities.
“Dar es Salaam, the commercial capital of Tanzania, has some areas growing at an annual rate of 20% but has a census every 10 years,” he said.
Tingitana explained that urban planners and public health specialists do not have accurate data of where people live or what services or infrastructure they have access to, which has major implications for disaster management, disease control and many other areas.
“Drones help fill this gap by acquiring high-resolution near-ground imagery on-demand and cost-effectively,” he said.
