Kevin Githinji
Kenyan drone prodigy Kevin Githinji has spent his early twenties turning curiosity into the continent’s busiest launchpad for unmanned-aviation talent. At 19 he decamped to South Africa, blazing through an eight-month piloting course in just three, then returned home convinced that Kenya’s skies were the next growth frontier. He co-founded Dronector Training School in 2020 and quickly spun up Aerial Eye Africa, a services arm that maps crop health, inspects power lines and tracks wildlife corridors. By 21 he was certified as the country’s youngest Designated Flight Examiner, licensing scores of new pilots and giving regulators a template for rigorous but entrepreneur-friendly standards.
Today, as CEO of Dronector, Githinji oversees a syllabus that pairs simulator labs with real-world missions, graduating technicians now deployed in agriculture, infrastructure, and disaster-response units across East Africa. His programme has already trained more than 300 operators and partnered with county governments to pilot drone-based fertilizer spraying that cuts chemical use by 30 percent. Next on his flight plan: a pan-African remote-training platform, hybrid drones engineered for high-altitude rangelands, and an advocacy push to streamline cross-border flight permits. Githinji’s bet is simple: Africa’s digital economy won’t just ride on cables; it will fly on rotor blades guided by home-grown talent.