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Building Africa's Next Drone Workforce: A Q&A with Palesa Thetele.
Africa has fewer than 5,000 certified drone pilots. Palesa Thetele, a computing graduate from Botswana, is now one of them.
Palesa joined an intensive residency at the African Drone and Data Academy, based at the Malawi University of Science and Technology. She started with zero flight hours. She finished with three remote pilot certifications after using drone mapping, GIS, and AI to tackle public health challenges.
Her training is part of Design Thinking for Drone and Data Technology for the Youth Force. The initiative is building a new generation of certified youth drone mappers. It brings together the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT), UNICEF, the African Drone and Data Academy, Generation Unlimited, the Lesotho Aviation Authority, and Yoma.
We spoke to Palesa about her background, the training, and how she plans to use spatial data to solve problems at home.
