Zipline medical drone delivery: Ghana operations decline as Nigeria expands to reach 100m people
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. By 2022, the country had opened five more centres, covering over 3,000 health facilities and delivering nearly 1,000 urgent health essentials per day. However, Ghana's medical drone delivery service has suffered a significant decline since 2025, with three of the six distribution centres suspended due to the government's refusal to continue funding them.
This suspension cut off about half the number of vulnerable communities that benefited from emergency supplies. While Ghana's service suffers this setback, 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. The Nigerian government and Zipline have announced plans to immediately build 12 additional distribution centres, with the expansion aiming to connect up to 20,000 health facilities and serve nearly 100 million Nigerians by 2028, which will make Nigeria the world's largest medical drone delivery network.
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Ghana's medical drone delivery service, once a continental leader, faces significant operational decline. This setback occurs as neighboring Nigeria
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