What did South Africans want for Christmas? A drone, apparently. According to an analysis of pre-festive season trends by e-commerce site bidorbuy, the term `drone’ is now among the ten most frequent searches on the site, ranking alongside watches‚ smartphones and laptops. Buying a drone for personal use doesn’t come cheap. The most affordable drone for adult use available in South Africa is almost R16 000, while even drones for kids will set you back up to R7 000.

There are other uses for drones, however. Animal welfare -- and the prevention of poaching -- has of late been a key focus for drone companies. Google is funding anti-poaching drones to protect rhinos in Africa, while Tanzanian startup Bathawk Recon has recently started using drones to track wildlife and poachers, looking to protect the country’s dwindling elephant population. Yet the real potential of drones in Africa, and where we will likely see more usage than purely personal, is in commerce. Africa’s economic growth is continuing apace, with seven of the 11 fastest growing economies in the world located on the continent. Yet transport networks are woefully unprepared to deal with the increased amount of commerce across Africa, with the World Bank estimating the continent will need to spend as much as $38 billion each year just to keep up the current level of development. The continent, however, has a history of leapfrogging certain types of technology and infrastructure and adopting the latest models. Most African nations skipped fixed line infrastructure in favour of mobile, while even within that space, for many Africans, a smartphone was the first such device they owned, as opposed to a basic or feature phone.