Ghana has lost its status as the country with the world’s largest medical drone delivery network, following ambitious expansions elsewhere on the continent.
In 2019, Ghana launched its Zipline medical drone delivery service with one centre – the Omenako centre in the Eastern Region – as a pilot.
And by 2022, the country had opened 5 more centres, covering over 3,000 health facilities in vulnerable communities nationwide and delivering nearly 1,000 urgent health essentials per day.
However, rather than continuing on an upward trajectory, Ghana’s medical drone delivery service has suffered a significant decline since 2025.
Three of the six distribution centres have been suspended due to government’s refusal to continue funding three of the distribution hubs, leaving the service with only 3 active hubs.
This has cut off about half the number of vulnerable communities that benefited from emergency supplies of vaccines, blood, and other medical needs.
While Ghana’s service suffers this setback, neighbouring Nigeria – which learnt from Ghana’s success story with a pilot unit in 2022 – has now expanded significantly.
Nigeria launched its first Zipline delivery centre in Kaduna in 2022, and later expanded with three more centres in Cross River and Bayelsa states, covering about 1,300 health centres and 13 million people.
Following the impact, the Nigerian government and Zipline have announced plans to immediately build 12 additional distribution centres in Nigeria to move beyond health-tech pilots.
The expansion, the Nigerian government says, aims to connect up to 20,000 health facilities and serve nearly 100 million Nigerians with faster access to medical supplies by 2028, which will make Nigeria the world’s largest medical drone delivery network by far.