Zipline

Drone Delivery · Healthcare Logistics · Africa

Partnership

Zipline's $150M-backed deal expands drone health hubs across Côte d'Ivoire

Washington funds the buildout while Abidjan commits to bankroll daily operations, a financing split increasingly used across Africa's drone push.

• Côte d'Ivoire's government approved an eight-year public-private partnership with Zipline to expand its AI-enabled drone health network from one distribution center in Daloa to ten nationwide, backed in part by a $150 million pay-for-performance award from the U.S. State Department.
• Zipline, founded in 2014, pioneered autonomous drone delivery of blood and vaccines in Rwanda in 2016 and has since built one of Africa's largest medical logistics networks.
• Under the financing structure, the U.S. provides upfront infrastructure funding while Côte d'Ivoire commits to paying for eight years of ongoing operations, including cold-chain warehousing and digital tracking.
• Since launching in Daloa in 2023, Zipline has delivered more than 3.55 million medical products, including about 2 million vaccine doses, to over 220 health facilities, contributing to an estimated 2,058 lives saved.
• The expansion mirrors Zipline's plan in Nigeria to grow from three to 15 hubs by 2028, reaching nearly 100 million people under the same U.S. pay-for-performance funding model.
• The health-logistics deal lands as Zipline is separately in talks to raise about $1 billion at roughly a $20 billion valuation, nearly triple the $7.6 billion valuation it set earlier in 2026.
• The deal reflects African governments increasingly treating drone infrastructure as a permanent national health-system asset rather than a donor-funded pilot, with financing designed to shift costs onto host governments over time.