Drones for Development in Ghana

Ghana has over the years made tremendous progress towards achieving accelerated development with the use of ICT and one of such ICT landmarks is the introduction and usage of drones in Ghana. Also referred to as Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS), Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), or a Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA), drones have generally had a sinister image, mainly due to its use by the military to track enemy combatants. Drones currently have key roles in aerial photographs and videos, real estate photography, elections monitoring, remote sensing, automated package delivery, and search and rescue in humanitarian response. Its application has also been seen in the area of E-Commerce order fulfillment/delivery, Territorial surveillance, Vessel traffic monitoring and Vessel Surveillance. However, improvements in technology and lowering cost has led to the remodeling of drones to have development applications to contribute in growth in sectors such as health, agriculture, security, road safety and traffic management; natural resource management, aerial photography, 3-D mapping; search and rescue, among others. It is against this background that Penplusbytes hosted the 2nd Technology Salon dubbed: “Technology Salon – Accra: How Can Drones Accelerate Ghana’s Development?” where it was realized that drones will play important role in Ghana’s development due to its myriad of areas of applications in almost every aspect of national life. This publication seeks to highlights the importance of drones and the opportunities its usage may present to the Ghanaian economy and beyond.