In Ivory Coast, 'drone academy' offers youth the chance to soar

"Drones have become my passion," says Noursely Doumbia, who holds a degree in electronics and is currently learning to pilot drones as part of a pioneering programme in Ivory Coast's economic capital Abidjan.

The training is being offered at a new "drone academy" which has been set up by the Ivorian Electricity Company (CIE) in order to revolutionise the inspection of its infrastructure and ultimately to reduce costs.

Although common in Europe, the use of drones is still in its infancy in West Africa although the commercial market for unmanned aircraft is expanding.

The aim is for CIE -- which is majority-owned by France's Eranove Group, a key provider of water and electricity in West Africa -- to train around 20 local pilots to inspect its high-voltage lines which criss-cross the country, stretching more than 25,000 kilometres (15,500 miles).

"We have a lot of problems with vegetation, we need to clear it all the time and it's difficult because it's all across the whole country," explains Benjamin Mathon, a pilot who is in charge of CIE's drone and youth training programme.

Dirt tracks that are impassable following heavy rain, widespread areas of lush tropical vegetation and a patchy road network often conspire to make access to electricity pylons difficult in a country which covers 322,000 square kilometres -- nearly two-thirds the area of France.

After overflying an area with a drone equipped with cameras and thermal and laser sensors, "we use artificial intelligence programmes which analyse the images for any defects, a rusty bolt on a pylon, a damaged cable," explains Mathon.

"The drone allows us to analyse a large number of lines in a short space of time, across great distances," he says.

Not only do students learn how to fly drones, as well as how to assemble and repair them, but are they also trained to use different software packages for analysing the images and resulting data, as well as geolocalisation and mapping.

"This is a major technological leap forward for CIE" and its 4,500 employees, says CIE Director General Dominique Kakou.

The drones enable CIE to "to inspect our infrastructure and ensure its safety in a much more pinpointed way, and also to optimise our costs and expenses," he says.

Before now, all inspections were done by helicopter or by teams on the ground, Mathon explains.

"Using helicopters is expensive, and on foot, you have to send out teams to areas which can be difficult to reach, which can create problems."
"I'm sure that young Africans are going to grab hold of this and surprise us by developing applications which we have not thought of. It's their generation."