When Zipline first entered Nigeria in 2022, the company’s operations looked like another ambitious health-tech pilot: drones delivering vaccines and medical supplies across a handful of underserved states.
Four years later, the company says it is preparing for something much bigger — a national logistics infrastructure play that could eventually reach half of Nigeria’s population.
Anthonio Pinheiro, Zipline’s newly appointed Nigeria Country Director, disclosed in a virtual interview with TechCabal on Wednesday that the company plans to build 12 additional distribution centres across Nigeria, expanding its network from three operational hubs to 15 facilities nationwide.
The expansion, he said, is designed to connect up to 20,000 health facilities and provide access to healthcare commodities for nearly 100 million Nigerians by 2028.
“Right now, with the three states we operate in — Kaduna, Cross River and Bayelsa — we are serving over 1,300 health facilities and about six million people,” Pinheiro said.
“The vision is to build an additional 12 distribution centres, which would serve up to 20,000 facilities and give access to 100 million people.”
The scale of the ambition marks a strategic shift for the California-headquartered autonomous drone company, which has historically operated through state-by-state partnerships in Africa. Nigeria is now becoming one of Zipline’s largest bets on the continent.
Zipline’s expansion signals a shift from isolated drone-delivery pilots to the early buildout of a nationwide healthcare logistics network in Nigeria — one that could help solve the country’s chronic last-mile delivery gaps by connecting tens of thousands of health facilities to faster access to medicines, vaccines, and essential medical supplies.
From pilots to national infrastructure
According to Pinheiro, Zipline’s expansion strategy in Nigeria reflects a broader evolution within the company itself.
“Every company reaches a pivotal point where it changes how it approaches the market,” he said. “For Zipline, that’s where we are.”
The company launched operations in Kaduna State in 2022 before expanding into Cross River and Bayelsa. But instead of negotiating isolated deployments with individual states, Zipline is now pursuing a federal-scale framework that would allow states to integrate more seamlessly into a national autonomous delivery network.
That transition is being supported by a broader partnership involving Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Health and the U.S. government, which backed Zipline’s African expansion through a grant initiative covering five African countries.
For Nigeria, the implications extend beyond drone delivery. Zipline increasingly sees itself as a national logistics and AI infrastructure company rather than simply a healthcare startup.
“Zipline is an AI robotics infrastructure company,” Pinheiro said. “A lot of people think about drones, but our drones are autonomous. Our entire infrastructure is built on artificial intelligence and robotics.”
The company’s current focus remains healthcare, but Pinheiro hinted that agriculture, animal health, e-commerce and broader logistics could become future verticals once the infrastructure matures.
The medical supply chain problem
At the centre of Zipline’s Nigerian operations is a problem that has plagued the country’s healthcare system for decades: unreliable medical supply chains.
Across many rural communities, health facilities frequently run out of vaccines, blood supplies, anti-venom, malaria medication and maternal care products.
A 2026 study on family planning services found that 56.8% of rural health facilities experienced at least one contraceptive stockout within three months, compared to 43.2% of urban health centres.
In some cases, patients travel hours to hospitals only to discover essential drugs are unavailable.
Zipline’s model attempts to eliminate those gaps through a network of automated distribution hubs, cold storage facilities and AI-powered inventory tracking systems.
Instead of forcing hospitals to maintain costly storage facilities and large medical inventories, Zipline manages supplies centrally and delivers medicines and health commodities whenever they are needed.
“If a hospital requests 20 vaccine doses and 25 patients show up, they can call us, and we can deliver the additional five within 30 to 45 minutes,” Pinheiro explained. “There are no missed opportunities.”
The company claims the model is already producing a measurable impact.
According to Zipline, vaccine stockouts in supported areas have fallen significantly, while maternal mortality rates in supported facilities have dropped by more than 50% due partly to faster blood deliveries.
Pinheiro also cited reductions in severe anaemia among children and improvements in vaccination and HIV medication access through partnerships with organisations such as Gavi and the Elton John AIDS Foundation.
One example he referenced involved an emergency snakebite case where anti-venom was delivered to a remote hospital within 47 minutes after an urgent request.
“These are people who otherwise may not have survived,” he said. “We are not just flying drones. We are saving lives.”
Building infrastructure outside the power grid
One of Zipline’s achievements in Nigeria has been its ability to operate largely outside the country’s unreliable electricity grid.
The company says its facilities in Kaduna and Cross River are now fully solar-powered, supported by backup energy redundancy systems.
Pinheiro acknowledged that many people assume drone operations are prohibitively expensive in African markets, but argued that the broader economics tell a different story.
“We end up being more affordable because of the operational efficiencies we create,” he said. “States reduce storage costs, reduce transportation costs and get much more visibility into healthcare utilisation.”
By partnering with renewable energy providers, Zipline says it has eliminated the need for tens of thousands of litres of diesel consumption monthly at some sites.
The infrastructure also serves surrounding communities and healthcare centres, effectively turning Zipline hubs into mini energy ecosystems in rural areas.
The policy challenge
Drone regulation remains one of the biggest barriers to scaling autonomous aviation across Africa, especially in countries with security sensitivities around unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). For instance, as of May 2026, all drone operators must obtain an End-User Certificate (EUC) from the ONSA before they can even approach the Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) for a permit.
But Pinheiro said Nigeria’s regulatory posture has become increasingly collaborative.
“I see those policies as issues of national security,” he said. “The government wants to protect Nigeria’s airspace, and rightly so.”
According to him, Zipline works closely with aviation and government regulators to secure approvals, define operational corridors and ensure compliance with airspace restrictions.
He argued that Nigeria is approaching a “perfect intersection” of policy readiness, market demand and technological maturity.
The COVID-19 pandemic, he noted, exposed how underserved remote communities remained despite urban healthcare improvements in Lagos and Abuja.
“Nigeria is more than the big cities,” he said. “There are people in riverine communities and hard-to-reach areas that still cannot access healthcare quickly.”