Drones over Africa would bring e-commerce to all, everywhere - if only we get rid of red tape
 Dubai-based Aramex wants to keep the continent's e-commerce ball on the hop by using aerial drones to get products to customers almost anywhere in the vast hinterland of Africa.
Aramex Nigeria, part of Arab international express, delivery giant, has an annual revenue of US$1.8 billion as well as being the first Arab company to be listed on the NASDAQ.
Now Aramex Nigeria's managing director, Faisal Jarmakani, sees drone delivery as the way forward in a country with burgeoning electronic sales and an insatiable demand for e-commerce products.
This, he says, would be coupled with novel GPS personal address system that could effect delivery anywhere on the planet within nine square metres - if only the government would get around to approving both the drones and the GPS address system.
The air freight market in Nigeria is huge, or would be if there weren't so much red tape. Nigeria does a lot of importing and exporting. While there have been a lot of complaints as the prices of oil increases, it has not greatly impacted on the growth of the trade.
"What is growing today in Nigeria, and in Africa, is e-commerce," Mr Jarmakani told the Lagos newspaper Punch. "We have got about 25 to 30 per cent growth in that market. Our vision is to see how we can improve customer experience."
The problem is that there are not enough cargo planes to get to the remote areas where e-commerce customers live.
"We don’t have enough planes and routes," said Mr Jarmakani. "Nigeria operates the biggest airport in Africa, and Nigeria’s carrier should be the most important. There has been discussion regarding Nigeria Air and as a logistics company, we really bank on that to improve the logistics industry.
Airlines are the biggest challenge, he said. "Passenger airlines are too small to carry much cargo. As a result, the rates are expensive for intra-African trade. It is cheaper to send a shipment from here to the hub in UK and then from UK to Ghana than sending by the local airline to Ghana."
Another problem is the infrastructure. "The infrastructure is not good though I see the Federal Government is doing a lot of work. There is a huge amount of trade intra-Africa but it is just so costly and that is why it affects our export capabilities," he said.
"The roads will take a very long time to fix because even if it improved in Nigeria, they are in poor shape neighbouring countries. All the signs are leading to airlines. Nigeria Air and local airlines are important for us to succeed in the market.
Nigeria is ready for drones, said Mr Jarmakani. "We see a very large increase in drone delivery and we need to be more focused on the automation of sorting of materials.
"The obstacle we have is to be able to get the clearance from the security agencies to deliver. We have great Internet connectivity and a huge number of mobile phone users in Nigeria.
If Aramex is to follow the progress made in East Africa, they may do what Kenya's Astral Aviation has done, having signed a letter of intent to buy two drones from Bulgarian start-up Dronamics, specifically their fixed wing Black Swan, with its 16-metre wingspan.
While helicopters are good over short distances and getting to hard to reach places, they have smaller payloads and shorter ranges, these fixed-wing drones will carry 350 kilogrammes over 2,500 kilometres. And while they require runways they need not be more than 400 metres of level gravel or grass.
Ahead of getting cargo delivery drones in the air is solving the problem of Nigeria's lack of a coherent system of personal addresses to actually deliver products e-commerce customers order.
"When driving on the road, house numbers are not arranged properly. So we have partnered with a company called 'what3words'. This system provides an exact simple to learn addressing system. What it does is to zone the world into a 3m x 3m square perimeter addressing system. So at every nine perimeters, there is an address that constitutes three words.
"What this does is instead of typing the whole address including the longitude and latitude; it will pinpoint the exact location one wants on the GPS. We have done a lot of testing and we have 20 to 30 per cent efficiency in implementing this technology. It is being considered as a national address system.
"So all we need is to get the approvals that will enable us deliver to local and remote areas. Security clearance is very important," Mr Jarmakani said.
Cutting needless costs is everything, and Mr Jarmakani's company places a special emphasis in robotics. "Today, the logistics is dependent on automation. We use automation in all of our operations and to separate all shipments. When the shipments arrive in Nigeria, we automate the process and it transfers each shipment to the desired destinations" he said.
"Automation is also very important in warehousing, materials sorting and good planning. Machine learning is used to plan routes and we tell the drivers which route to take in order to get to their destinations as quick as possible.
We do a lot of testing in our warehousing solution by having robots pick up the shipments and deliver them to us. It is still on a small scale, but we are using the kids we sponsored for global robotics competitions to research and develop these techniques for our e-commerce and logistics solutions," he said.
Mr Jarmakani finds the present condition of world trade to be conducive to growth of Nigeria and Aramex. E-commerce has grown, Africa has a 30 per cent increase in e-commerce. This makes Nigeria one of the fastest growing e-commerce industries in the world.
And the good thing about e-commerce is that it will help the logistics company as well as the delivery agents, e-tailers, and retailers. It is really creating a positive national impact on the economy.
"We can see that there are huge opportunities; it is just for the logistics companies to know where to position themselves. I think Amazon has positioned itself in a very good way. If you look at the market and identify the growth areas, you will put yourself in a positive place in the market.
"We get a lot of imports from China and for Aramex, our largest nations are the United States, the United Kingdom, China and Dubai.
While Mr Jarmakani expects some impact from the US trade war with its trading partners little has surfaced at this point.
"We hear about the trade war in the media but really, just like it has affected China and the US, in retrospect, I believe it will help Nigeria because the focus of all these multinationals, who cannot trade with China, is to look at the emerging markets.
"The most appetizing emerging market in Africa is Nigeria. We have seen an increased focus for multinationals to set up business in Nigeria and I believe this will affect the economy positively.
"Also, because of what is happening now, Aramex is looking at opening a hub in Nigeria for West African countries and this will enable all the different hubs to send goods to Nigeria and then we transport to Ghana, Ivory Coast and other neighbouring countries," Mr Jarmakani said.
As he sees it his company and Nigeria will grow together if only the bureaucrats could clear away the red tape that is slowing progress that would benefit everyone. |
