The Country Manager of Zipline Ghana, Daniel Kwaku Merki, has dismissed suggestions that the firm’s drone delivery service is being diverted to transport non-essential items such as condoms and textbooks.
His rebuttal comes after the Minister of Health, Kwabena Mintah Akandoh, alleged during the Government Accountability Series on Monday, December 1, 2025, that the multi-million-dollar drone initiative had strayed from its core mandate of supplying urgent, life-saving medicines to remote communities.
Mr Merki, however, maintains that such deliveries are “extremely rare.”
He explained that only one in 20,000 flights involves items like condoms, and even in those cases, the requests originate from agencies under the Ministry of Health rather than Zipline itself.
“Critical life-saving commodities, which we have delivered, have saved lives in the tune of 10,000. There are emergencies we attend to. There are many nuances to these critical deliveries. There is a list we work with from the Ministry of Health, of products we are mandated to deliver,” he stated.
Emphasizing that Zipline merely carries out instructions from the relevant health authorities, Mr Merki added: “Supply continuously comes from the agencies under the Ministry of Health. Even if you want to go deep on this line of questioning, I don’t think I’m the best person to answer because we work with the Ministry and its agencies to ensure we make the most critical deliveries.”
When asked directly whether condoms were part of Zipline’s approved delivery catalogue, Mr Merki clarified that they were not dispatched as standalone packages.
“These condoms were not a box of condoms delivered by itself. It was added in association with other commodities,” he explained.
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