A systematic review on unmanned aerial vehicles in Sub-Saharan Africa: A socio-technical perspective

In recent times, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) popularly known as drone technology have gradually gained widespread adoption all over the world. UAVs’ relevance within modern society stems from it being able to solve socio-economic issues as well as improve productivity. Sub-Saharan Africa has become a region of global interest with regards to technological development, leapfrogging and foreign investment, despite the lag in socio-economic development in comparison with other regions. Backed by socio-technical theory, the aim of this paper is to investigate UAV adoption and its usage in Sub-Saharan Africa by means of a systematic literature review methodology. Selected papers were reviewed, assessed and results were categorized according to the domain within which UAVs have been and are being deployed in Sub-Saharan Africa. We also determined whether the research reported on existing projects or rather made proposals on the use of UAVs.Our results reveal that UAV adoption in the sub-region is still in its early phase, with a number of implemented cases primarily focusing on healthcare and crop farming. The study makes theoretical and practical contributions to the topic of UAVs/drone technology within the sphere of Sub-Saharan Africa from a socio-technical perspective.