Cow semen is transforming farming and agriculture in Rwanda  

This change comes after years of complaints from local farmers about delays and delivery of poor-quality semen which leads to failed attempts to breed their cattle.

For years, farmers in Rwanda have depended on using artificial insemination as a method of producing cows in large quantities for breeding purposes.

This process has however not been without problems. One of the key problems was that the semen used for insemination had to travel long distances over rough roads, which reduced its quality.

Transporting it in large, heavy containers filled with liquid nitrogen also made the process slow and difficult.

This often caused disagreements between farmers and vets when cows failed to conceive.

To solve this, the drone delivery company Zipline Rwanda began testing how drones could carry semen directly to vets and farmers.

Their trials, which have lasted six months, show that using drones keeps the semen in better condition and increases the success rate of insemination to over 90 percent which is a big improvement from the national average of 40 percent as of 2024.

So far, around 400 cows have been inseminated during the pilot programme in two districts in Eastern Rwanda.

Farmers who used to wait several hours for deliveries are now getting semen in under an hour and one drone can carry enough semen to inseminate 40 cows and fly up to 210 kilometres in a round trip.

Meanwhile, Zipline has indicated plans to expand the service to more parts of the country after the current testing phase ends.