The Country Manager of Zipline Ghana, Daniel Kwaku Merki, has pushed back against claims that the company’s drone delivery service is being misused to transport non-essential items, such as condoms and textbooks.
His response follows allegations by the Minister of Health, Kwabena Mintah Akandoh, who disclosed during the Government Accountability Series on Monday, December 1, 2025, that the multi-million-dollar drone programme has veered off its original purpose of delivering emergency, life-saving medical supplies to hard-to-reach communities.
But Mr Merki insists that such non-medical deliveries are “extremely rare.”
According to him, only one in 20,000 flights involves items such as condoms, and even then, these requests originate from agencies under the Ministry of Health, not from 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 said.
He stressed that Zipline merely executes requests placed by the appropriate health agencies.
“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,” he explained.
When pressed on whether condoms were originally part of Zipline’s approved delivery items, Mr Merki clarified that the products were not delivered as standalone packages.
“These condoms were not a box of condoms delivered by itself. It was added in association with other commodities.”