Dove Air

Dove Air provides life-saving deliveries of medical products and vaccines with drones. Dove Air is a UN partner for aid delivery, maritime conservation & peacekeeping. We'd using the funding to expand operations to service the conflict-affected province of Cabo Delgado in Mozambique to ensure access to health care products for maternal clinics. 

I'm an experienced executive listed on Forbes 30 under 30 with over 10 years’ leadership in startups and social impact.

My family are Portuguese Mozambicans, given the plight of the Northern Province I founded Dove Air with four other executives from across Africa, two ex Unicef and two listed on Forbes 30 Under 30. Dove Air focuses on autonomous delivery of aid using unmanned aerial vehicles, but also assisted multilateral partners in maritime conservation patrols and peacekeeping.

Previous to Dove, I lead investments at Serra de Estrela Investments Ltd BVI, focusing on startups, renewable energy, conservation and social impact.

My work within technology and entrepreneurship lead to me being recognized on Forbes 30 under 30 when my start-up Sonder was acquired by the world’s largest manufacturer. 

Dove Air provides an on-demand medical delivery system, leveraging drone technology, which can deliver stabilization drugs such as oxytocin, artesunate, and blood. Our objectives for this approach are threefold:

1. Increase the survival rate at primary healthcare facilities, thus will reduce the need for many patients to go to comprehensive care.

2. Increase the survival rate of those patients in transit to comprehensive care through stabilization. An on-demand delivery system becomes a “force multiplier” when combined with the National Emergency Medical Services (NEMS) 

3. As communities observe an improvement in survival rates at Public Health Units (PHU), this will (a) increase attendance as a whole and (b) encourage the community to visit the PHU before seeing the traditional healer rather than as a “last resort” after the traditional healer practices have proven unsuccessful.

Dove Air already operates an innovative hub and spoke model for medical resupply in Mozambique. Compared to the decentralized model used by other UAV operators like Zipline, the financial efficiency of a centralised model is greater. Zipline would require multiple bases to cover the same operational area as a single Dove Air hub. Our operational costs are reduced by 49% by avoiding duplication of resources across multiple launch sites. Furthermore, our Doves can land at their destination, while Zipline drones can only use parachute drops. This allows Dove to operate Bi-directional flights, where cargo is carried in both directions. This makes for far more effective integration into existing supply chains. Our drones also have a greater payload (up to 19kg) and range (up to 800km) than competing humanitarian UAVs.

Dove has already conducted over 35,500 life-saving deliveries, a third of which were life-critical. Through Dove’s supply chain efficiency, blood waste in Mozambique has been reduced from ~11% to ~0.5%, while there were no reported injuries or medical product damage. 

We have served over 2,000 health facilities and managed up to 100 flights (up to 1,000 kg of payload) in a single day. As one aspect of these operations, we have been credited with helping three hospitals in Mozambique to eliminate maternal mortality, and are continuing to take momentous strides to eradicate child and maternal mortality in the region.

Dove Air's drone aid delivery network in Mozambqiue serves over 2,000 health facilities and covers  over 10 million Mozambicans. This supply chain network provides over 120 blood products, vaccines, essential medicines.

Dove Air uses drone technology to reduce the inadequate supply and distribution of emergency medical resources which can promote the good health and well-being(SDG goal 3) in Africa. A Dove Nest model offers considerable potential cost savings associated with centralising the storage of certain life-saving drugs for the entire country in one site, which will significantly offset the initial investment required.

Doves are capable of delivering multiple medical commodities. We prioritise those aimed at child and maternal mortality (blood, oxytocin and artesunate) for maximum initial impact.

Increasing the number of drone flights will generate economies of scale. The longer-term aim should be for drones to deliver multiple, rather than single use, medical products, but other medical commodities (rabies PEP, HIV/AIDs PEP, antivenom) should be phased over time.

Including mapping/inspection capabilities that can be switched in the field will optimise both social impact as the drones can be used also for humanitarian response and public safety and improve the cost effectiveness of the investment made through economies of scale.

Over 2 billion people globally lack access to basic healthcare. This is compounded by challenging terrain, conflict, and poor infrastructure. With the global Corona virus pandemic, the lack of access to essential medicine has resulted in high death rates related to easily curable diseases, which could have been prevented with timely access to appropriate critical drugs. The need for frequent supply of medicine has become more urgent and the importance of preventing stock-outs has become a major health priority in developing countries. 

The Elevate prize would enable Dove to expand it's service area and leverage the larger platform and audience for donor campaigns.

Increased support would accellerate Dove's growth. The financial profile of our drone-delivery model demonstrates that there are significant cost-savings in leveraging this platform to provide additional medical commodities beyond blood, artesunate and oxytocin. Dove has organically grown to a team of almost 40 and is self sustaining due to the increased savings for local health ministries, increased visibility will support Dove's expansion to new sites not just in Africa. Dove has signed a Cooperation Engagement with the UN for a further 7 sites in Africa and regionally in the Indian Ocean.

Dove's founding executive team and remaining 40 staff, except for one are from across Africa. Two of the 3 founders were listed on Forbes for their work within innovation, and are founding donors at Dove.

Francisco is a serial entrepreneur listed on Forbes. He was recognized by the Geneva Center of Security Policy in 2020 for aid delivery and peacekeeping.

Siena Crawford was Maternal and Child Health Specials at Direct Relief and Head of Philanthropy for Zobel de Ayala, Borno, and Khula Education. 

William Elong has held leadership at Thales, Oracle, UNICEF & Microsoft. He’s also listed on Forbes 30 Under 30.

I’m an experienced executive listed on Forbes 30 under 30 with over 10 years’ leadership in business, and Nonprofits, along with extensive social impact investment in Africa.

Most drone delivery programs are donor funded, Dove’s model is to operate the site in two shifts of 10 hour operations (10 hours of staff, 7 hours of flight time), and to conduct cross subsidization of the evening profitable flights in maritime conservation and search and rescue, precision agriculture, LiDAR mapping and other autonomous tasks to reduce the cost exposure for aid delivery and health ministry engagements.  Dove has been able to operate sustainabilbly and with a surplus, whilst growing from 0 to almost 40 in headcount in it's first 18 months.

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We would use the funding to expand our operations in Mozambique and accelerate the establishment of our new sites in Nigeria and Sierra Leone.

UNDP, UNICEF, UN ODC

We have established a UN Cooperation Engagement to expand across 7 countries to establish Dove Air sites regionally.