“Permission is an event, but participation is the system.” That line, from a speaker drawing on Nigeria’s experience, summed up two days of drone sessions at the recent Aviation Africa Summit in Nairobi. The 10th edition of the summit, held on 9 and 10 September at the Sarit Expo Centre, brought together regulators, operators, manufacturers, insurers and security specialists. The African Drone Forum ran the drone and autonomous systems track.
Aviation approval merely starts the work. Companies that treat it as the finish line often find that security clearances, other agencies and busy airspace still stand between a permit and routine operations. Drawing on the Nairobi sessions, here are five lessons learned for companies who aim to operate at scale and repeatedly in Africa.
Inter-Agency Coordination And Security Are A Separate Workstream
A company may receive civil aviation authority (CAA) authorisation and expect to start flying routinely, but this may not prove to be accurate. In a recent project, I secured CAA approval to fly, but remained grounded on the day of the flight because the local security agencies had also not provided their clearance.
During one of the panels, a speaker explained that, “An approved aircraft can still become an unknown aircraft,” for agencies outside the CAA. For this reason, you may have to coordinate with several different groups. In the Niger Delta alone, for example, an operator will have at least six institutions involved in every flight: the Office of the National Security Adviser, the CAA, military air operations, ground security forces, air traffic services and the client.
An aviation approval says an operation is safe to fly. It does not tell the security services, air traffic control or the people protecting a site that the operation exists. For that operator, the process is “not a policy question” but a pre-flight checklist.
What to do:
- Ask the CAA what the authorisation does not cover, and get the answer in writing where you can.
- Write down every institution that must clear the company, the aircraft, the airspace and the site, and who owns each step.
- Turn the list into a routine checklist that runs before every flight, not a one-off exercise.
Get to Know The Players and Build Trust
One approval does not satisfy everyone, and each agency owns something different. For example, security agencies provide threat mitigation but do not own airworthiness. Additionally, security reviews also often arrive late, run in series and have no clear owner. To keep things moving along, get to know the players.
A U.K. operator described how the civil and military aviation authorities will each wait for the other to move first. As a result, even a compliant operator with all the evidence can stall, “not because we failed any tests” but because no agency wants to be first to say yes. A law-firm panelist added that when a security requirement changes late in the process, operators will often have to go back square one.
Agencies trust operators they know. The Nigerian operator built that trust by sharing flight data and meeting other operators and agencies in regional forums.
What to do:
- Treat security as its own workstream with an owner, a timeline and a named contact at each agency.
- Brief agencies before you apply, with the concerns you expect and the mitigations you propose.
- Ask for parallel review where possible, and for clear timelines in writing.
- Become a known operator. Share flight outputs and keep records the agency can verify.
Be Visible And Coordinated In The Air
Flying unseen, either to save on equipment or because telling other airspace users about one’s operation is never a good plan. Visibility and routine coordination are part of the cost of operating. Panelists put Mode S transponders at roughly $2,800 and ADS-B units at around $2,000 on drones that can cost $6,000 or $7,000. Yet identification is what builds trust.
One panelist described a South African platinum mine that has safely run roughly 28 to 30 drone flights every 24 hours, with more than 2,800, this year. When managers fly in by helicopter, they notify the drone operation the day before and wait for confirmation. In effect, the drone operation clears crewed aircraft into its airspace. Gaps remain. Low-flying helicopters that make no radio calls are still the biggest hole in detect-and-avoid, and there is no agreed separation criterion between crewed and uncrewed aircraft.
A Nigerian operator explained how when his team’s aircraft broadcast a call sign, air traffic control can ask whether a contact is theirs and get a verifiable answer. Air traffic controllers from Nigeria’s oil region said that when drones share position and altitude, they can give helicopter crews accurate traffic information, even where formal separation is not possible. These are all best practices.
What to do:
- Fit a transponder or ADS-B where required. To save costs, consider renting them, where one operator keeps a pool of units and rents them by the day, moving them between tail numbers.
- Add a receiver at the ground station so the pilot sees nearby aircraft. Panelists mentioned low-cost units at about $650.
- Notify air traffic services and neighbours before each flight, and agree in advance what happens if something goes wrong.
Don’t Assume The Process Is The Same Everywhere
It would be great to be able to transfer one country’s experience into another, but that is not reality. Requirements vary by country, location and mission. The sequence of approvals often differ. One operator said that in many African countries the security conversation comes first and the CAA follows.
Kenya runs a defined civil pathway: import approval, inspection at the port of entry, registration, training with an approved organisation, insurance, then an operating authorisation. A KCAA speaker said the authority has issued more than 5,000 authorisations and published 29 revised regulations. It also allows foreign operators a temporary 60-day import route. When an operator wants to conduct BVLOS operations in Kenya, the KCAA organises a multi-agency meeting where the operator meets a representative of each institution involved in the airspace so they can make their case.
In South Africa, a panelist described night security surveillance near a major airport that was cleared through a central airspace management unit, with a defined restricted airspace, a concept of operations and radio calls. Transponders have been required there in controlled airspace since 2015. Regulators across the region are working on harmonisation, but speakers stressed that the aim is similar rules, not copied ones.
What to do:
- Verify requirements for each location and mission before assuming earlier approvals apply.
- Ask local operators and the regulator which agencies are involved and in what order.
- Budget time for each new jurisdiction as a fresh project, even for an aircraft and crew you already know.
Plan For Repeatability and Insure Your Risk
Do not treat each approval as a one-off or view insurance as a last tick box. Policies usually require regulatory compliance. If a security agency lawfully brings down a drone that was not properly integrated, the loss can fall outside coverage. Insurers at the summit said they can underwrite drone risk and asked to be treated as partners in planning, not an afterthought.
Evidence and records make the second operation easier than the first. A U.K. operator’s advice was to prove what you are saying, not just say it. Present governance procedures, trained crews and a track record in a form security agencies can use, and arrive with a specific, low-risk use case in a small area before asking for more.
Zipline, which started in Rwanda in 2016, argued that such evidence should travel across borders so regulators do not have to start from scratch. One panelist noted that operators who show extra risk mitigation, such as their own surveillance, tend to find approvals and inspections easier.
What to do:
- Document every approval step, contact and lead time, plus lessons from each operation.
- Start small and documented, then widen the area and complexity as confidence grows.
- Show your insurer the approvals, security arrangements and operations manual before you fly.
- Keep records for audit, so the next application starts from evidence rather than from scratch.
What Still Has To Change
Operators can only do so much. The aim is not to change anyone’s mandate but to give operators certainty about process and timing.
A law-firm panelist argued that regulators should offer a single window owned by the CAA, which would run security reviews in parallel in the background, with enforceable service-level agreements and transparent timelines.
A technology development authority at the Konza Technopolis described an approved drone corridor and a first UTM for internal airspace management, and asked how regulators will deconflict “five thousand drones above Nairobi.”
The aircraft are ready and the evidence exists. What remains missing is one shared picture of who is flying, where and under whose authority. Until that exists, a CAA-approved operator will still have to run the traps of different agencies, using different timelines, in different places across Africa.