Gadgetory

Rwanda is an amazingly beautiful country its nickname is land of a Thousand Hills you can't talk about anything about Rwanda without talking about the genocide and kind of Rwanda is recovery from the genocide the government there has really tried to put a stake in the ground in becoming this kind of technological hub of Africa they're really kind of leaning into the idea of innovation and and this kind of startup you culture Rwanda is a complicated country its president Paul Kagame has been accused of being a dictator silencing the opposition and violating human rights on the other hand he's also seen as a visionary and areas like rebuilding the economy and the health care system in 1994 the genocide devastated the country a million people killed also the infrastructure the electricity running water buildings everything was gone we were interested in how this country was able to build itself up and become one of the leaders of health care in Africa their approaches to put a hospital in each province and make it accessible the president is really open to working with nonprofits like Partners in Health to fill the state of our hospitals what we are trying to do is to really prove that it's possible to provide the high-quality medical care even in a velocity once they decide okay we're gonna put this hospital here the government is also kind of like supporting that with other pieces of infrastructure such as though they'll pave the road that goes there and one of the provinces we are in they're laying like a fiber network and just like running through field just propped up on sticks kind of and it's totally active it's just I haven't buried it yet because the road isn't being paid now people are trying to find innovative ways to service these rural hospitals the Rwandan government partnered with this Silicon Valley company called zipline and what they're doing is they're using drones to fly blood to hospitals in the countryside we have a fleet of twelve autonomous drones we deliver critical blood supplies to hospitals the hospital will say we need this this blood the platelets whatever the hospital needs at that moment from getting an order to launching me for about 10 to 15 minutes loads a night of this drone loads up an SD card with a predetermined course to the hospital and the drone is launched and so the drone flies circles over the hospital and kind of descends in a spiral shape and drops this package onto a target and the drug does not land there it continues then spirals back up and flies back one of the big problems with providing healthcare to rural populations is electricity so one of the places to be visited was this big solar electricity farm when it was built it was the largest solar farm in East Africa there are 28,000 solar panels spread across this vast flat plain which is unusual for Rwanda because it's such a mountainous hilly country a lot of other countries in Africa are looking to Rwanda as a leader for help because it's been so successful and lowering its rates of malaria TB maternal mortality those kinds of things it's a new way of thinking about where good hospitals and well-educated doctors can be located Rwanda is so fast-growing that a lot of people told us come back to Kigali in five years you won't recognize it the rest of Africa is watching you