Kenyan inventor who built a flying taxi

Morris Mbetsa from Kenya’s coastal city of Mombasa took a giant leap to the sky with a drone huge enough to fly passengers last year. 

Mbetsa realized his interest in technology at the tender age of six. “Technology is my life. I never watched football while growing up. My room was full of electronics and wires,” he told Kenyan network K24.

Burned with the idea of building Africa’s first flying taxi, Mbetsa would have to drop out of college to carve out a strategy for his amazing invention. He didn’t have the patience “to wait for a lecturer to take me through many stages for the next six years.” 

“That was too long,” he said. 

Mbetsa then made the internet his friend, collecting enough knowledge and skill to realize his vision of building Africa’s first passenger drone. He later got exposed and had great training to refine his skills.

“I went to the Notre Dame University in the US for aeronautical training and later on, undertook my internship at the IBM Innovation Forum in Boston,” he told the K24 Tv.

Mbetsa began actualizing his vision after he noticed the people he shared it with – the developed countries – weren’t willing to share the innovation with Africa. They wanted to keep it, a proposal he rejected.

“Having seen that they (developed nations) were not willing to share this with us, I took it up as a challenge and started working on this project,” he said.

The drone taxi is powered by electricity and can carry one passenger for up to 25 minutes at a speed of over 120 kilometers per hour with an elevation between 10 and 30 feet above the ground level.

“With this drone, you can easily fly from Nairobi CBD to Thika, you, however, need to be trained first and be certified to operate this drone, before you are allowed to fly it,” he stated.

The drone taxi can be operated manually or controlled using a remote. Mbetsa and his team have begun working on an air traffic control system, to enhance communication between all the flying taxis while on a flight and hope to be part of these inventors who propose a solution adapted to the realities of his country and his continent. For him, Africa can have its taxi-flying drones instead of waiting for when it is done elsewhere.