Nigeria to License Drones in New Rules for Unmanned Aircraft

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – Nigeria plans to license drones used for both commercial and private purposes under new regulations governing unmanned aircraft, the head of the civil aviation agency said.

“We have proposed regulations already,” Dele Sasegbon, director of general aviation at the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority, told reporters Thursday in the capital, Abuja. “For the integration of unmanned aircraft into the national airspace system, we have to do it seamlessly.”

Steps have been taken by the National Airspace Management Agency to bring drones into the country’s airspace system, he said.

Individuals and companies in Africa’s most populous country of more than 180 million people have expressed interest in the use of drones in agriculture, for monitoring pipelines and storage tanks in its oil and gas industry, and in power-line inspections, Sasegbon said.