The Great Sphinx of Egypt is conventionally dated to around 2500 BC in the 4th Dynasty of the Old Kingdom, during the reign of Pharaoh Khufu or his son Khafre (i.e. the Sphinx is ~4,500 years old). However, there is no direct evidence that Khufu or Khafre built the Sphinx; instead egyptologists rely on circumstantial evidence, such as the fact that Khufu commissioned other lion-like imagery during his reign, and ancient graffiti inside the King’s Chamber of the Great Pyramid of Giza directly mentions Khufu. While these data points are noteworthy, they are not compelling evidence that Khufu or Khafre commissioned the Sphinx.

Taking a first principles approach to the problem, we cannot discount the possibility that the Sphinx was potentially built much earlier, e.g. 10,000 to 5,000 BC range (i.e. 12,000 to 7,000 years old), and it was later rediscovered and restored during the Old Kingdom, if the geological evidence steers us in this direction. Specifically, there seems to be evidence of water erosion on the body of Sphinx and the walls of the Sphinx enclosure that point to the statue potentially being significantly older than conventional archeology indicates. The core of this argument is put forward by Robert M. Schoch, an Associate Professor of Natural Sciences at Boston University, in two peer-reviewed articles, Seismic Investigations in the Vicinity of the Great Sphinx of Giza, Egypt (1992, Geoarcheology), and Redating the Great Sphinx of Giza (1992, KMT).

Schoch posits that a geological examination of the erosion on the walls of the Sphinx enclosure reveals telltale signs of persistent rainfall driven erosion over thousands of years, and this is markedly different from the wind driven erosion which is present on many other monuments on the Giza plateau, suggesting that the Sphinx may have been constructed during a different climatic period. Furthermore the limestone blocks on the Sphinx itself were similarly eroded by what appears to be persistent rainfall, and new stones fitted to the eroded blocks behind them. Ancient inscriptions on the stones suggest that the refaced stones dated from the Old Kingdom, which meant that the original walls must have eroded long before that time. Since significant rainfall in Giza is a pre-3000 BC phenomenon, Schoch concludes that the original carving of the Sphinx predates the Old Kingdom by several thousand years.

I’m not a trained geologist, but looking at the photos below (left panel is the Sphinx wall, and right panel is a limestone quarry adjacent to the Great Pyramid of Giza), the patterns of erosion are noticeably different.

• Left panel: photo of the southern wall of the Sphinx enclosure showing water (via rainfall) erosion.

• Center panel: 3D rendering showing the difference between rain versus wind erosion.

• Right panel: photo of a limestone quarry adjacent to the The Great Pyramid of Giza, dated by Egyptologists to Old Kingdom times showing only wind erosion.

Given this evidence, the below alternative historical timeline suggested by Schoch is at the very least a possibility. So, perhaps the Sphinx was built during an earlier period of lost Egyptian history, only to be forgotten for thousands of years during some kind of climate related dark age, and then rediscovered and restored during the Old Kingdom.

Another fascinating element about the history of the Sphinx is that every few thousand years a new advanced society seems to “rediscover” it largely buried in sand, and is curious enough to re-excavate it.1

For instance, during a short dark period of ancient Egyptian history around 2000 BC, the Giza plateau was abandoned, and sand eventually buried the Sphinx to its shoulders. 500 years later, during the New Kingdom in 1550 BC (18th Dynasty), Pharaoh Thutmose IV, decided to lead an excavation, after a dream in which his father appeared before him in the form of the Sphinx. His court was successful in revealing the paws of the Sphinx, and subsequently erected the granite shrine known as the “Dream Stele” between its paws.

Excerpt from translation of the Dream Stele hieroglyphs,

“O my son Thothmos; I am thy father, Harmakhis-Khopri-Ra-Tum; I bestow upon thee the sovereignty over my domain, the supremacy over the living ... Behold my actual condition that thou mayest protect all my perfect limbs. The sand of the desert whereon I am laid has covered me. Save me, causing all that is in my heart to be executed.”

After the collapse of Egypt’s New Kingdom around 1070 BC, the Giza plateau lost relevance as a holy land, and the Sphinx returned to the sand.

1,000 years later, successive Roman emperors contributed to the restoration of the Sphinx, beginning with Nero in the 1st Century AD. Nero sent an exploratory expedition down the Nile river in 61 AD, and ordered the sand once again cleared from the Sphinx enclosure, followed by the construction of a staircase leading down into the court of the Sphinx. Following this, in 160 AD Marcus Aurelius ordered the restoration of the pavement of the Sphinx court, which was continued by successive roman emperors.

Following ~200 AD, Roman power in Egypt declined, and the desert sands once again claimed the Sphinx, until Napoleon Bonaparte’s military campaign through Egypt ~1,600 years later in 1798. Interestingly, Napoleon travelled with 170 scholars and scientists known as “savants”, and following the trip published The Description de l’Égypte, which sought to comprehensively catalog all aspects of ancient and modern Egypt.

News of Napoleon’s adventures in Egypt led to renewed interest in Egyptology across Europe. 19 years later, in 1817, a British diplomat, Henry Salt, commissioned an Italian explorer, Giovanni Battista Caviglia, to begin a large scale excavation of the Sphinx, the first in modern times. While Caviglia was successful in revealing the chest and paws of the Sphinx, a complete excavation was not completed until 1936, by French egyptologist, Émile Baraize.

So the full body of the Sphinx has only been uncovered for the last 89 years (1936 - 2025). For the vast majority of the Sphinx’s history, following the collapse of whatever civilisation built the monument, it has largely been buried beneath the sand, with only its head revealed; every 1,000 or so years, a new civilisation discovers it, excavates it, and then eventually loses interest or power, at which point the sand reclaims all but the head of the Sphinx. Considering how recently our civilisation excavated the Sphinx from the sands of time, it’s reasonable to consider that we might not yet have discovered its complete history.

Further reading

Robert Schoch, Research Highlights

World History Bulletin, Spring / Summer, 1994

Robert Schoch, The Great Sphinx: She was the Lioness Mehit who Gaurded an Ancient Archive, 2017

Napoleaon Bonapart in Egypt, Epic History, 2025

Howard Vyse, Operations Carried on at the Pyramids of Gizeh in 1837, 1840

I recently stepped down from my role as a vice president at Zipline in order to begin a new adventure as a startup founder.

Building out the sales and business operations functions for frontier markets at Zipline was an insanely challenging and deeply rewarding experience, given the sheer ambition of the project, and the extremely high bar for execution, so I thought it was worthwhile sharing some reflections.

I worked at Zipline for 3+ years (2021 - 2024), and looking back, this was the beginning of our hyper-growth phase; we scaled from 70,000 global drone deliveries when I joined to over 1.5 million deliveries when I left. Many things were constantly breaking during this period, and we successfully pulled off a redesign of the entire drone from the ground-up for the launch of “Platform 2”, our short-range vertical take-off and landing vehicle, which is operational in the United States as of early 2025. Our “Platform 1” drone, a long-range fixed-wing vehicle, has been operational across Africa since 2016.

Zipline is headquartered in San Francisco, yet for the first 5 years of the company’s existence the majority of commercial flights took place in Rwanda. One reason for this is regulatory: the European Union Aviation Safety Agency developed a prototype performance-based regulatory framework for unmanned aircraft in 2016. The Government of Rwanda adapted this prototype framework and leapfrogged the EU in its implementation, with Rwanda becoming the first country globally to implement performance-based drone flight regulations in early 2018. Rather than a blanket rule for all drone flights, the government specifies different safety standards based on the mission that the drone is completing. This created a unique opportunity for Zipline to begin operating at significant commercial scale in Rwanda before any other market because of the sophistication of Rwanda’s regulatory environment for unmanned aircraft.

We also pitched several governments across East Africa, Latin America and South Asia on the potential of Zipline’s technology to revolutionise medical care, and Rwanda was the first country that committed to a large scale implementation. This speaks to the strength of President Kagame’s leadership team; Kagame has the vision and executional ability of a startup entrepreneur, applied to nation-state building. The Government of Rwanda was extremely early to recognise the potential of drone delivery to solve critical societal problems, such as maternal mortality from postpartum haemorrhage, and created a regulatory environment in Rwanda that enabled Zipline to flourish.

In 2023, Zipline was the first company to receive approval from the Federal Aviation Authority to conduct flights in the United States beyond visual line of sight, using an onboard perception system. Our track record of 1 million+ drone flights across Africa with zero safety incidents was a critical input to the FAA’s decision.

Building New Products

The core of my work at Zipline was conceptualising and implementing new commercial opportunities for drone delivery. My team launched several new product categories, including consumer goods, animal health, therapeutic milk products to treat severe malnutrition, and human vaccine deliveries for local health posts. Many of the ideas we had for new product categories that could be delivered by drone were complete flops, but a few projects achieved very significant scale.

One interesting example was the success of our animal health and agriculture business unit. Our CEO believed that the agriculture and livestock sector could be a large opportunity for Zipline (at the time, the company was solely focused on the delivery of blood and human pharmaceuticals). To begin with, we narrowed down on artificial insemination of pigs as the specific use case for drone delivery within agriculture that would likely be easiest to scale first for a few reasons.

• Pig semen can’t be cryopreserved and must be stored so temperature and storage conditions are very important in transit.

• The value per package is relatively high and pigs are in heat for ~24 hours, so semen is required on-demand.

• The Government of Rwanda was very interested in transitioning the country to artificial insemination of livestock in order to improve meat yields, and thereby eliminate severe child malnutrition.

After weeks of testing the impact of drone flights on semen motility, we eventually found success with specific packaging methods. Over the next one year, we expanded pig semen deliveries across Rwanda, before launching cattle semen and livestock vaccines. The strategic insight is that we often started a new delivery category with a niche product and a customer with a very strong pain point. Once the niche product category was saturated, we then expanded to adjacent products in the same sector (e.g. pig semen + cattle semen + livestock vaccines = general animal health offering).

Growing a new program to a handful of deliveries was often relatively straightforward - the challenge came in figuring out how to efficiently scale a new use case to 100K+ deliveries in a resource constrained environment, while maintaining a perfect safety record. In an environment like Zipline, you have to figure out what fires you should let burn, and what fires pose a serious risk of burning down the entire company. You cannot solve every problem, and you must prioritise ruthlessly in order to stay alive.

Space Weather

Interestingly, ionospheric scintillation has a large impact on the reliability of GPS around the equator, and this in-turn impacts the reliability of drone flights. This was one of the more challenging problems that we encountered in scaling operations in equatorial countries. Solar radiation creates irregularities in the Earth’s ionosphere, which then causes GPS signals to “scintillate” or fluctuate as they pass through these regions of disturbance. And to make matters more complex, we are currently in the peak period of solar activity in the 11 year Schwabe cycle. Given that Zipline’s core product in equatorial countries is on-demand blood delivery, offered 24 hours / day and relied upon in emergencies, service reliability challenges could not be tolerated.

At the core of many of the solutions we came up with for these challenges was an obsession with testing practical solutions in the field. There are many solutions that sound perfectly reasonable, however in the process of implementation you’re forced to think through every step within a larger system. In doing so, unexpected challenges often reveal themselves that can render a particular solution infeasible. Conversely, a culture of relentless testing can also reveal a path forward through trial and error, that may have at first appeared unlikely to succeed on the whiteboard.

Platform 2

The launch of Zipline’s next generation drone (referred to as “Platform 2”) was the most challenging project that I’ve ever worked on at a startup. I was constantly reminded of this quote from Morris Chang’s early career at Sylvania, where a manager says, “We at Sylvania cannot make what we can sell, and we cannot sell what we can make.” My greatest fear was that perhaps we had envisioned a drone system for Platform 2 that was simply too complex to manufacture affordably at scale. Given that deliveries are now growing steadily in Texas and Arkansas, today Platform 2 appears likely to succeed.

Some of the technical specifications have been publicly shared, and are worth covering here. The drones use dual Nvidia Jetson Orin modules, which enable 275 trillion operations per second. One Nvidia module sits in the mother ship, which hovers ~100 metres above ground, and a second module sits in the delivery droid that descends from the mother ship on tether, to precisely drop an item in a 45cm square. The situational awareness of the drones is quite remarkable, enabling the delivery of delicate goods such as an ice cream cone or cup of coffee to an apartment or a suburban home.

Hardware companies are very odd in some ways, because your success creates massive compounding costs as you scale, which can easily kill the company. As a result, the team has to be extremely talented at financial engineering, meaning you’re constantly raising money and obsessively cutting costs. While a software company might need $2M to reach product-market fit, and $10M to scale; a hardware company, by contrast, might need $10M to produce a proof-of-concept, $50M to scale manufacturing, and $500M for international expansion. This creates an interesting dynamic where the executive team of a hardware startup have to become super talented at raising capital in order for the company to succeed. A great software CEO might tell you that they don’t like speaking to investors, while this is rarely the case with a great hardware CEO. At Zipline, it always felt like we were raising the next financing round before the last financing round had closed, and in retrospect this mindset was critically important for the survival of the company.

In addition, we were maniacally focused on cost reduction, despite raising $1B+ in financing. Everything from supply chain materials to team lunches was carefully monitored for opportunities to cut, and this was deeply embedded in the culture. Over and over, operations and sales teams were drilled with the math required to win:

Revenue x Gross margin - Operating expenses > 0

A culture of frugality and healthy paranoia, never assuming that our survival was guaranteed, enabled our team to persevere while countless competitors slowly perished.

Reducing Maternal Mortality

When I reflect on my time at Zipline, I am most proud of the positive impact we had on local communities. For decades, technologists where doubtful about the potential use cases for drones within healthcare, however the statistics today are overwhelming. Peer reviewed studies in The Lancet Global Health and other leading journals have observed the following outcomes:

• 56% reduction in maternal mortality at facilities served by Zipline.

• 67% reduction in blood product expiration at facilities served by Zipline.

• 71% faster median delivery time for blood products delivered by Zipline.

• 37 percentage point increase in childhood vaccination rates at facilities served by Zipline.

One of the leading causes of death for women in developing countries is postpartum hemorrhage (excessive bleeding following childbirth), and this is the core problem that Zipline is designed to solve. By centralising storage of blood products in highly sophisticated medical warehouses, and delivering blood units on-demand, Zipline solves the trade-off between access and waste of scarce medical products that plagues healthcare systems in developing countries.

Zipline’s healthcare solution today reaches far beyond emergency blood products. For instance, one of the critical challenges that we sought to solve within vaccine distribution was the prevalence of zero-dose children; 2.25 million children in Nigeria receive no childhood vaccines, and these children account for one-third of all child deaths in the country. In order to solve this, my team structured a partnership with The Global Vaccine Alliance to deliver several million doses of routine immunisations to rural communities over multiple years. This included drone delivery of the RTS,S malaria vaccine, which could prove transformative in combating malaria, a disease that remains one of the leading causes of child mortality globally.

Ultimately, the proof of the solution will be evidenced by the scale of Zipline’s operations. Today, if you take Zipline’s healthcare operations in Africa as a standalone unit, we have surpassed 1 million flights across Rwanda, Ghana, Nigeria, Côte d’Ivoire, and Kenya. While I am confident that we have made a tangible dent in solving the problem of maternal mortality, we still have a long way to go. Over the next 5 years, I envision Zipline operating at national scale across >90% of frontier markets as the backbone of healthcare logistics.

What comes next? Dear reader, I haven’t the faintest clue. Yet, within this short collection of poems, I discover a flicker of guidance, a fragile compass, as I stumble through the uncertainty of my days.

Excerpt 64, Toa Te Ching (4th Century, BC)

what is rooted is easy to nourish.

what is recent is easy to correct.

what is brittle is easy to break.

what is small is easy to scatter.

prevent trouble before it arises.

put things in order before they exist.

the giant pine tree grows from a tiny sprout.

the journey of a thousand miles starts from beneath your feet.

rushing into action, you fail.

trying to grasp things, you lose them.

forcing a project to completion, you ruin what was almost ripe.

therefore the Master takes action by letting things take their course.

she remains as calm at the end as at the beginning.

she has nothing, thus has nothing to lose.

what she desires is non-desire.

what she learns is to unlearn.

she simply reminds people of who they have always been.

she cares about nothing but the Tao.

thus she can care for all things.

A Mother in a Refugee Camp, Chinua Achebe (1930)

no Madonna and Child could touch

her tenderness for a son

she soon would have to forget…

the air was heavy with odours of diarrhoea,

of unwashed children with washed-out ribs

and dried-up bottoms waddling in laboured steps

behind blown-empty bellies. Other mothers there

had long ceased to care, but not this one:

she held a ghost-smile between her teeth,

and rubbed him down with bare palms.

she took from their bundle of possessions

a broken comb and combed

the rust-coloured hair left on his skull

and then — humming in her eyes — began carefully to part it.

in their former life this was perhaps

a little daily act of no consequence

before his breakfast and school; now she did it

like putting flowers on a tiny grave.

Eternal Love, Daniel Armah Blay (2024)

the passage of time is a strange sensation,

its pace quickens with indifference.

cherished memories of your touch,

that warmth is distant now

yet my being still yearns.

I hold your presence in the focus of my heart,

tenderly searching every nook of my recall

for heavenly feelings of moments passed.

longing to be immersed in your divine spirit,

united as one.

All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, Richard Brautigan (1967)

I like to think

(the sooner the better!)

of a cybernetic meadow

where mammals and computers

live together mutually

programming harmony

like pure water

touching clear sky.

I like to think

(right now, please!)

of a cybernetic forest

filled with pines and electronics

where deer stroll peacefully

past computers

as if there were flowers

with spinning blossoms.

I like to think

(it has to be!)

of a cybernetic ecology

where we are free of our labours

and joined back to nature,

returned to our mammal

brothers and sisters,

and all watched over

by machines of loving grace.

This week I have some exciting personal news to share. I’ve made the decision to join the team at Zipline, a technology company that provides automated, on-demand delivery of critical goods like medicines, vaccines and blood across the United States, Rwanda, and Ghana through an instant logistics system powered by high-speed autonomous aircraft.

My personal journey with Zipline started in 2016 when I first read that a startup with plans to revolutionise healthcare in Africa had raised an $18 million Series A investment round co-led by the prolific Silicon Valley venture firm, Sequoia Capital, and that Alfred Lin had joined the Zipline board of directors, no less. It piqued my curiosity that a company operating exclusively in Rwanda, a country of 12 million people, could attract investment from a top tier venture firm.

Two years later in 2018, I had the good fortune of meeting Israel Bimpe at the airport in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia during a long layover on my way to Ghana. At the time, Israel was the Head of National Implementation for Zipline in Rwanda, and I had just begun on my own startup journey building Hatch in Sydney, Australia. Luckily, Israel was wearing an unmistakable Zipline t-shirt and was open to grabbing breakfast with me, as we both had a few hours to pass until our next flight. Over breakfast, Israel explained the progress that Zipline had made in Rwanda and that the team was mid-way through construction of their first distribution centre in Omenako, Ghana.

Fast-forward to November 2021: after 4 years of helping to build and scale Hatch to several million in revenue, I made the decision to apply for a role with Zipline launching new international markets.

The problem: unpredictable demand in emergency healthcare

Emergency healthcare outside of urban centres suffers from a fundamental trade-off between access and waste. To ensure that hospitals can respond to unpredictable demand, healthcare systems tend to over-stock emergency products at the last mile and simply accept that some proportion of products will expire and have to be thrown out. This is particularly true for emergency blood transfusions: hospitals must stock eight blood groups (A, B, AB and O, in addition to negative and positive rhesus factors) and multiple blood components (red blood cells, plasma, platelets, and cryoprecipitate). In addition, blood products require careful temperature controlled storage, and some products have a very short shelf-life (for instance, platelets expire within one week of collection from a donor).

The problem of blood product wastage is felt most acutely in developing countries, where blood donations are inadequate and health infrastructure is lacking. For example, in June 2021 the WHO Regional Director for Africa, Matshidiso Moeti, commented that Nigeria had a 72% shortfall in available blood product stock, and blood unit wastage rates in public hospitals can be as high as 30%. Taking a second example from South America, in this comprehensive study from Georgetown Public Hospital Cooperation in the Republic of Guyana, researchers found that 25.4% of blood units were discarded over a three year period, largely due to the expiration of products (in 93% of cases). And the cost of blood product wastage is tremendous; for clinics in the eastern region of The Democratic Republic of the Congo, the average cost to collect, test and store a unit of blood is $107 — given that the Congo collects ~250,000 units of blood per year, assuming a conservative wastage rate of 15%, this equates to $3.75 million USD of discarded product every year.

Looking beyond the significant cost of discarded blood products, this problem also directly contributes to a meaningful proportion of preventable deaths. Blood loss following child birth (postpartum haemorrhage) is a leading cause of death for women across the developing world, and in Sub-Saharan Africa roughly one quarter of these deaths are the result of insufficient supply of blood products.

Finally, this problem is not limited to the developing world. For example, in the United States it is estimated that blood wastage rates vary from 1% to 5% in hospitals across the country, which equates to between 200,000 to 1 million discarded blood units each year.

How Zipline improves access to emergency healthcare and reduces waste

Zipline solves the trade-off between access and waste in emergency healthcare by centralising the storage of scarce medical products in world-class distribution centres, where products are easy to keep cool and easy to keep track of. Medical staff at regional hospitals place orders with Zipline through an online portal, WhatsApp or SMS when there is an immediate need (for example, a patient requiring an emergency blood transfusion), and Zipline delivers these products on-demand through a network of high-speed autonomous drones. Deliveries typically arrive within a 30 minute window from when the order is placed, and each Zipline distribution centre services hundreds of locations within an 80km radius.

The core insight is that if you can deliver emergency products very quickly and reliably, you eliminate dependence on expensive refrigeration and high stock counts at the last mile. Instead, scarce products are delivered fast enough via drone that the level of patient care is not compromised, even though the necessary product was not stocked directly at a regional hospital. This is a fundamental transformation of the existing cold-chain logistics network.

Market traction: 225,000 deliveries completed and counting…

Ultimately, building break-through technology will only get you so far; the products that win are the products that touch the lives of the most people, and this is where Zipline’s progress is undeniable.

To date, Zipline has completed 225,000+ commercial deliveries predominantly in Ghana and Rwanda, containing more than 5 million units of vaccines, blood and other emergency medical products. In Rwanda, Zipline currently delivers ~75% of the national blood supply outside of Kigali, the capital city. The blood wastage rate in Rwanda has decreased from an average of 7% prior to the introduction of Zipline, to less than 1% today in participating hospitals.

This progress is the result of incredibly strong local operations, sales and customer success functions in every region that we service. The below graph shared by Zipline’s SVP of US Sales & Customer Success, Irene Scher, illustrates our growth trajectory heading into December 2020, which has only accelerated since.

Doubling down on growth in 2021, Zipline signed agreements to expand services to Nigeria and Côte d'Ivoire. Nine new distribution centres (five in Nigeria and four in Côte d'Ivoire) will collectively service over 10 million people and 3,000+ remote hospitals and clinics.

Our progress is far from limited to the African continent; governments around the world are beginning to recognise the value of Zipline’s emergency logistics system. In the United States, the Federal Aviation Administration granted Zipline an emergency waiver in May 2020 allowing for medical supply deliveries in North Carolina, and Zipline recently entered into partnership with Walmart to begin pharmaceutical deliveries in Arkansas. In Japan, Zipline has announced a partnership with Toyota Tsusho Corporation to begin medical deliveries to remote communities across the country.

Solving difficult engineering challenges is a sustainable competitive advantage

To scale to 225,000+ completed commercial deliveries, Zipline has already had to overcome engineering and operational challenges that most believed were insurmountable. The below quote from an interview with Zipline CEO, Keller Rinaudo, sums up the technical difficulty of our vision.

“The overwhelming advice we got was, this is not technologically possible. Even if it were technologically possible, it wouldn’t work reliably. Even if it did work reliably, there’s no willingness to pay for it and no need for it in different parts of the world. Even if there were a need for it, the technology won’t be able to operate at scale. Over the course of the last three years, every year, we’ve had to disprove one of those notions.”

— Keller Rinaudo, CEO of Zipline

So, how did Zipline create the world’s first drone based healthcare logistics system at scale, and why will it be difficult for other organisations to replicate?

Two factors that have contributed to Zipline’s success in solving tough technical challenges are vertical integration, and an obsessive culture of testing systems to the point of failure.

Regarding vertical integration, Zipline designs and manufactures their own drones, in addition to building and operating their own distribution centres. This is critical because building the entire system from the ground up allows the team to make very quick iterations when things don’t work as expected, and continuously improve every aspect of the system over time, without relying on slow and expensive external contractors.

The technical architecture that underpins this system is unique and has taken almost a decade of iterations to develop. This includes the circuit boards and microprocessors that determine every decision that the drones make mid-flight; the navigation system and air traffic control algorithms that allow the drone to understand the optimal flight route; and the distribution centre’s ultra-capacitor-powered launch catapult and landing system.

Regarding our obsessive culture of testing, Zipline has two fully operational distribution centres in Davis, California and Hatton, North Dakota used exclusively for test flights. This is a critical aspect of Zipline’s product development strategy: engineering teams can design, manufacture and test a new component in a live flight all on the same day. North Dakota was specifically chosen as a test site because it experiences some of the highest wind speeds and coldest temperatures in the United States, pushing Zipline drones to the absolute limit.

There is no better illustration of the technical sophistication of Zipline’s product than its one-of-a-kind landing system. Zipline drones do not have a landing gear and distribution centres do not have runways, and so decelerating the drone from 113km per hour to a gentle landing was a very challenging problem. The team solved this problem by building a world-first elevated arresting gear — a cable suspended by two 10 metre poles with rotating arms. The cable rotates upwards to catch returning aircraft by a hook on their tail-piece and bring them to a cushioned landing. Below is a video of the first-generation arresting gear in action.

Of course, solving some of the world’s most difficult engineering challenges requires an incredibly talented team. Over the last decade, Zipline has been able to assemble some of the greatest minds in aerospace, embedded systems, robotics, and avionics, including a number of early team members from SpaceX and Tesla. For instance, we recently hired Joseph Mardall, a 10 year Tesla veteran who led the development of the Tesla Model Y heat pump system. Notably, Zipline’s Chief Technology Officer, Keenan Wyrobek, was an early robotics pioneer, co-creating Willow Garage and the Robot Operating System (ROS), an open source collection of software frameworks that underpins much of modern robotics.

Emergency healthcare is just the beginning for Zipline

While the core of Zipline’s mission is ubiquitous access to emergency healthcare, the long-term vision is far more ambitious. Our unique logistics infrastructure could potentially be applied to many industries from general medical supplies, to e-commerce, and farm-produced crops.

Zipline is building a platform for instant deliveries for the entire planet. Rather than prioritising fast delivery of hamburgers and fries, we’ve begun by prioritising life-saving medicine. I’m looking forward to the journey ahead!

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References and further reading

Amy Cassidy, Why are women still dying from obstetric hemorrhage? A narrative review of perspectives from high and low resource settings (2020) International Journal of Obstetric Anesthesia (read more)

Imelda Bates, Maternal mortality in sub-Saharan Africa: the contribution of ineffective blood transfusion services (2008) British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology (read more)

Krista Kapralos, A Blood Transfusion in Africa? It’s Free in Rwanda, Unaffordable in Zimbabwe (2017) Global Press Journal (read more)

Rajini Kurup, A study on blood product usage and wastage at the public hospital, Guyana (2016) National Center for Biotechnology Information (read more)

Daniel Marfo, Flexible Supply Chains in Times of COVID: Ghana's Overnight Pivot (2020) (read more)

Jessica Mathews, Walmart is getting closer to delivering cough drops 50 miles away by drone (2021) Fortune Magazine (read more)

Evan Ackerman, Wizards of ROS: Willow Garage and the Making of the Robot Operating System (2017) IEEE Spectrum (read more)

Ann Bailey, North Dakota's nasty winter weather is ideal for California drone company's testing (2021) Grand Forks Herald (read more)

Alice Lloyd George, Sitting down with Zipline CEO, Keller Rinaudo (2017) TechCrunch (read more)

Tom Banks, The designer who built a drone to save lives: an interview with Keenan Wyrobek (2019) Design Week (read more)

Timothy Hannon, Waste Not, Want Not (2015) American Journal of Clinical Pathology (read more)

Jeff Maotela Kabinda, Blood transfusion in the Democratic Republic of Congo: efforts and challenges (2015) Médecine et Santé Tropicales (read more)

Zipline’s Nick Hu on the future of healthcare supply chains (2021) Digital Health Forward (listen)

Keenan Wyrobek discusses how Zipline's AI-drones are reshaping Africa (2021) The Robot Brains Podcast (listen)

Zipline turns five: a look back, and ahead (2021) Zipline blog (read more)

Miriam McNabb, Zipline in Japan: New Partnership with Toyota Tsusho Will Provide National-Scale Drone Delivery Service (2021) Drone life (read more)

Here is my reading list for the next four months:

(1) Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson (1992)

I don’t often read fiction, and this will be my second attempt at reading Snow Crash. I’m interested in this novel because Stephenson seems to have an uncanny ability to predict technological trends, and portray the downstream consequences of breakthrough technologies. In Snow Crash, originally published in 1992, he coins the term “metaverse”. This term has gained a lot of traction recently following Facebook’s name change to Meta, and Zuck’s insistence that “the metaverse brought to you by Meta Inc” will be a fabulous place for us all to build our digital lives. Sure thing, Zuck…

Side note: I’ve also been meaning to read Stephenson’s essay, In the Beginning… Was the Command Line.

(2) When Money Dies by Adam Fergusson (1975)

This book has come across my radar several times over the last few years. It’s focused on the experience of living under hyperinflation in Weiner Germany (mid-1920s). I’m interested in learning about how inflation can impact social cohesion — this is quite relevant to our current situation with governments around the world engaging in monetary experimentation not previously seen in our lifetime (e.g. quantitative easy, yield curve control, and negative interest rates).

(3) Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the race to Electrify the World by Jill Jones (2003)

The electrification of the planet is perhaps the most powerful technological shift of the last 300 years. This book portrays the battles between Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, and George Westinghouse, three brilliant inventors and entrepreneurs, as they compete to introduce DC (direct current) and alternating current (AC) in cities across America. There are clear parallels here between today’s titans of industry (Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos come to mind) and the entrepreneurs and inventors of the 1800s. This book will hopefully provide a useful framework for understanding how the greatest minds conceptualise and implement break-through inventions.

(4) The Company: A Short History of a Revolutionary Idea by Adrian Wooldridge and John Micklethwait (2003)

The legal concept of “limited liability” and the limited liability company, or LLC for short, is not typically thought of as a “break-through” invention, however it fundamentally changed our collective ability to leverage private capital in the pursuit of large scale projects. Today, the power of corporate conglomerates like Apple and Amazon rivals sovereign states and organised religion. I’m interested in studying the history of the company in more depth, and this book will provide a useful starting place.

(5) The Alchemy of Finance by George Soros (1987)

So far, this is the only autobiography on my reading list! If you’re unfamiliar with George Soros, he is often referred to as “the man that broke the Bank of England” following his successful bet that the Bank of England would be forced to devalue the pound sterling in 1992, in which he netted a ~$1 billion profit. This event, generally referred to as “The Black Wednesday Currency Crisis”, has also led many pundits to deride Soros as a “currency manipulator”. Personally, I tend to view short-selling as a useful mechanism for price discovery, so I don’t take any issue with Soros from an ethical perspective. I’m interested in learning more about Soros’s theory of market reflexivity, which has become a prominent theory in modern finance.

(6) Voluptuous Panic: The Erotic World of Weimar Berlin by Mel Gordon (2000)

This is the second book on my reading list focused on the downfall of the Weimar Republic. I’d like to read this because Gordon is solely focused on the cultural shifts that took place during the hyperinflation years of the Weimar Republic, rather than the economic shifts. There is a general theory that the early stages of hyperinflation are often associated with over-indulgence particularly by the upper and middle classes of society, because rising prices of financial assets make people feel as though they are becoming rich. At some point, the euphoria of rising asset prices gives way to the realisation that no real wealth is being created, instead the currency is being debased. I’m excited to continue developing my understanding of this phenomenon.

(7) The Fear: Robert Mugabe and the Martyrdom of Zimbabwe by Peter Godwin (2011)

The Chief Strategy Officer at the Human Rights Foundation, Alex Gladstein, mentioned this book as an interesting read in this great podcast. It’s focused on the brutal treatment of the citizens of Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe following his general election loss in 2008. Political mismanagement and corruption have condemned too many Africans to poverty, and Zimbabwe under Mugabe is a prominent example of this.

(8) The Mandibles: A Family, 2029-2047 by Lionel Shriver (2016)

The second fiction novel on my list, The Madibles is set in the United States in the year 2029 during a national debt crisis of epic proportions. The dollar has collapsed in value, US Treasury bonds are nullified, and a new global currency is created, the Bancor. This book was also featured on Alex Gladstein’s reading list.

*(9) Leonardo Da Vinci by Walter Isaacson (2017)

My original reading list had eight books, but I thought I’d also add this biography of Leonardo Da Vinci by Walter Isaacson. I read this book for the first time a few years ago and it had a profound impact on how I viewed the process of learning. Isaacson is an incredible writer and he portrays Leonardo’s life in beautiful detail in this biography. I very much admire Leonardo’s intellectual curiosity and keen sense of adventure, so I think it’s worthwhile skimming back through this great book and making some notes as I go!

Kitwe, Copperbelt Province, ZAMBIA

A Chinese supervisor in an underground pumping station at the NFCA's (Non-Ferrous Company Africa) Chambishi Copper Mine in Kitwe, Zambia. The NFCA is a Chinese owned company that operates several mines across Zambia’s Copperbelt.

— Photography by Sven Torfinn (2013); ‘Mining for Mao’

What is debt-trap diplomacy?

The term ‘debt-trap diplomacy’ refers to the practice of one country (the creditor) lending excessively to another country (the debtor), typically for the construction of critical infrastructure such as roads, railways, and energy projects. The infrastructure itself acts as the ‘collateral asset’ backing the loan, meaning that if the debtor country (the borrower) fails to pay back the loan, the creditor country (the lender) can seize control of the infrastructure project. In the process, the creditor country seeks to gain ownership of a strategic resource (be it a port, road, or railway), which is potentially much more valuable than an immediate financial return.

Many have argued that China’s Belt and Road Initiative is a prime example of debt-trap diplomacy. In 2018 President Xi Jinping pledged US$60 billion in support for infrastructure projects across Africa, but at what cost? The conditions attached to loans extended to African nations are often shielded from public scrutiny, and the most recent paper published by the Chinese Communist Party detailing foreign aid initiatives appears to be from 2014. Meanwhile, public debt burdens across Africa have been rising sharply since the mid-2000s, in-part driven by borrowing from China.

By closely examining the emerging debt crisis in Zambia, we can begin to develop a more detailed picture of the diplomatic relationship between China and several African nations in an era of rapid development, paired with crippling debt.

Lungu’s looming crisis

Debt sustainability issues began to emerge in Zambia not long after the 2011 general election, in which the opposition party, Patriotic Front, defeated the incumbent Movement for Multi-Party Democracy. When the Patriotic Front came into office in 2011, public debt totalled US$1.9 billion, equating to just 8.4% of GDP, well below the global average for developing countries. Led by President Michael Sata (2011 - 2014) and subsequently Edgar Lungu (2014 - present), the Patriotic Front almost immediately began borrowing heavily. By 2018 public debt reached US$9.9 billion, a 5-fold increase from 2011, equating to 88% of GDP according to the World Bank.

Borrowing has not slowed since, in fact it is gaining pace. In 2019, Lungu’s government ran up a budget deficit of 9% of GDP, a larger deficit than 2018, according to Fitch Ratings (a credit rating agency). Today, the largest government expense is paying down interest on existing debt, seriously hampering the Patriotic Front’s ability to pay for basic services for the people of Zambia.

The coronavirus pandemic has further accelerated Zambia’s economic crisis. In a national broadcast on April 24th 2020, President Lungu asked the country the following question: “Where will we find money to pay salaries for our public service employees?”

“Public debt” is defined as borrowings owed by the national government of Zambia, public corporations, state-owned enterprises, political sub-divisions, and private debtors if the loan is guaranteed for repayment by a public entity.

Please note that these figures rely on official reporting by the Zambian Ministry of Finance, which some argue understates debt levels.

— Data Source: World Bank (explore the data here)

Zambia, built by Beijing

— Photography by Sven Torfinn (2013); ‘Mining for Mao’

“Rock falls are the most frequent of the severe problems. They are at times fatal, or result in crushed bones”, says a nurse at Sino-Zam Friendship Hospital in an interview with Human Rights Watch. The hospital is located in the heart of Zambia’s Copperbelt Province, where local mine workers at multiple Chinese-owned copper mines receive medical care.

The humanitarian impact of Chinese owned copper mines in Zambia has been well documented, however the consequence of Chinese infrastructure investment on Zambia’s public debt levels is often overlooked.

So, how much debt does Zambia actually owe to China? It turns out that question is difficult to answer. Many of the loans are organised between specific Zambian government agencies and The Export-Import Bank of China; they are not necessarily reported by the Zambian Ministry of Finance. A comprehensive analysis is provided by the China-Africa Research Institute, an ongoing project by researchers at John Hopkins University. Their analysis finds that from 2016 to 2018 alone, China issued 30 loans to the Zambian government or state-backed enterprises, totalling US$5.7 billion (explore the data here). If this figure is correct, Chinese loans may account for 50% of Zambia’s outstanding public debt, an incredibly large figure.

Putting aside the sheer magnitude of Zambia’s debt burden, the rapid pace of infrastructure development is remarkable. For instance, construction of the Kafue Gorge Lower Power Station, scheduled to be completed this year, will increase Zambia’s electricity supply by an estimated 20%. The project is funded by a US$1.7 billion loan from the Export-Import Bank of China.

Another notable project is the Mongu-Kalabo Highway, a 34 kilometre bridge across the Zambezi flood-plane that provides a critical road link between Zambia and Angola. This US$300 million project was completed in 2016 by PowerChina, a Chinese state-owned contractor.

The fear with these immense infrastructure projects is that they may result in China taking control of critical state resources, if debts are not repaid. This fear is justified, but often overstated; contrary to sensational media articles, China does not own Lusaka Airport (yet). The serious risk for the Zambian government is that many projects currently underway are structured as Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) agreements. This means that a Chinese contractor (often a state-owned enterprise) builds the infrastructure and operates it until the debt is repaid (perhaps over a 20-year period). Following repayment, ownership of the project is transferred to the host government (Zambia). In the event that the host government cannot afford to repay the debt, it is entirely possible that the infrastructure ends up in the hands of private investors, or a foreign state (this occurred with Sri Lanka’s Hambantota Port in 2017).

Perhaps debt relief is just a phone call away. President Lungu released an official statement in March detailing a private phone call with President Xi Jinping, in which he asked the Chinese leader for “debt relief and cancellation”. Increasingly, it appears as though a direct deal with Chinese leadership is the only way out for Zambia. Whether history will view China’s influence in Zambia as aggressive debt-trap diplomacy or benevolent foreign aid will ultimately be determined by the generosity of Xi Jinping and the Politburo. The fate of the Zambian people lies in the hands of a foreign creditor. That in itself is a shame.

Half price Eurobonds…

A significant portion of Zambia’s debt has nothing to do with China, and is equally troubling. Since 2012, Lungu’s government has issued multiple ‘Eurobonds’ to public market investors, totalling US$3 billion dollars. These debt obligations actively trade on the London Stock Exchange, and fall due for repayment in specific portions between 2022 and 2027.

First, a quick primer on Eurobonds. A Eurobond is essentially a large loan (a ‘bond’) typically issued by a government or major company to investors, and it is denominated in a currency that is not the local currency of the country issuing the bond. Counterintuitively, Eurobonds do not necessarily have any direct association with Europe or the euro currency. For instance, Zambia’s Eurobonds were issued in US dollars (to be specific, a Eurobond priced in US dollars is referred to as a ‘Eurodollar bond’).

In September 2022, Zambia’s first Eurobond will ‘mature’, meaning that the US$750 million face value of the loan is due for repayment. Following that, in April 2024, Zambia’s second US$1 billion Eurobond falls due for repayment. Finally, Zambia’s third US$1.25 billion Eurobond must be paid back over three instalments in July of 2025, 2026, and 2027.

Investors are already ‘pricing in a default’ for Zambia’s first Eurobond maturing in 2022, meaning markets do not have confidence that Lungu’s Patriotic Front will be able to repay the money. As a result, Zambia’s debt trades at around 50 cents on the dollar. You can view global bond markets just like any other prediction market: investors (essentially professional gamblers) weigh the probability that the Zambian government will repay holders of its debt, and make trades with other market participants as their perception of the risk of default changes. Currently, investors believe the probability that the Zambian government will be able repay is about as a good as a coin flip. On the other hand, if you invest in a Zambian bond today and the government does repay, you can double your money in two years time! Zambia’s bonds are almost as ‘cheap’ as the debt of Venezuela, Turkey, or Lebanon (countries experiencing severe humanitarian crises and therefore have a high probability of defaulting on loans). This is because the price of the bond is inversely related to the probability of repayment; as countries veer towards economic collapse, the risk of defaulting on debt rises, and investors become less willing to hold on to it, causing the price of the debt to fall.

Defaulting on Eurobond debt will cause severe difficulties for future government administrations by cutting off access to international capital markets and damaging Zambia’s reputation. At this stage, alternative options are dwindling.

Is another debt jubilee Zambia’s only escape?

The World Economic Forum, 2005 (Davos). World leaders discuss solutions for debt relief in Africa. Pictured left to right — Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Thabo Mbeki, Tony Blair, Bono, and Olusegun Obasanjo.

In 2005 the international community came together to cancel the developing world’s debt. None other than U2’s Bono graced the stage alongside world leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos, and proclaimed that “the world spoke, and the politicians listened.” The Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative resulted in a total of $100 billion in debt cancellation for 37 countries, 31 of them in Africa, including Zambia. The achievement was celebrated as a historic “debt jubilee”, allowing African nations the opportunity to prosper, unshackled from the chains of interest and principal.

Today, 15 years later, debt levels have well exceeded previous highs, and we find ourselves in an all too familiar predicament. The infrastructure projects that China is funding are critically important, but the magnitude of the debt is insurmountable. This is not a path towards sustainable development. With the world reeling from an unprecedented public health crisis, and $143 billion owed by African governments to Chinese lenders, we may soon face cascading sovereign insolvencies across Africa, with Zambia the first of many to come.

Unfortunately, I can offer no easy solutions, only questions.

• Why must African nations, time and time again, succumb to the illustrious charm of the imperial purse?

• Why is sustainable development so elusive in Africa, despite incredible progress across much of Asia?

• Why do we continue to elect incompetent leaders more interested in self enrichment than collective enlightenment?

I hold on to an uncompromising faith that the answers we seek will reveal themselves just beyond the horizon. From the temples of Aksum in the Horn of Africa, to the far flung reaches of the Afro-diaspora; down the waterfalls of the Great Zambezi and across the plains of the Serengeti, freedom will flow. Our generation has the power to create the change that we so desperately need.

—Armah D. Blay

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One of the most interesting examples of monetary debasement that I’ve stumbled across is the rise and fall of Akori beads as a form of money in Western Africa from 300 AD up until the European colonial era of the 1900s. The oldest beads discovered in Western Africa are made of a silicate glass slag - the by-product of smelting iron ore. However, the origin of the iron used to make these beads is unknown, with some archaeologists hypothesising that it may originate from meteorites. The beads themselves may have originally been exchanged by Egyptians and Sumerians to West African merchants in the ancient citadel of Ghana (located in modern-day Mauritania).

From the 16th to the 20th Century, the market for Akori beads suffered several hyper-inflationary shocks caused by the importation of glass beads manufactured in Europe (particularly Venice) and traded by Europeans for slaves and precious resources along the west coast of Africa. During this period, the Akori bead became so closely associated with the slave trade, that they are often referred to as “slave beads” in European texts and museums. This association of the beads with slavery is not unwarranted, but it fails to appreciate the fascinating history of the beads, long pre-dating the European conquest of Africa.

In what follows, I’ll provide a relatively short history of these beautiful beads and analyse their role as an early form of money.

The mysterious origin of the Akori bead

“Akori beads represent one of the unsolved enigmas of west African history.... Akori were beads of oval or cylindrical shape, highly appreciated on the Gold Coast, but also known in other parts of west Africa— this is all that is certain.” — Milan Kalous (1966), A Contribution to the Problem of Akori Beads

Akori beads are typically blue, green, yellow, or red in colour; made of glass, coral, or porcelain-like material; cylindrical or round in shape; and generally about the size of a marble. What makes these beads so unique is their intricately layered “mosaic” design. Today, if you travel to any traditional market in Ghana, Ivory Coast, Guinea, Liberia, or Sierra Leone, you’ll likely come across colourful beaded necklaces that imitate the Akori bead.

Photo from Augusto Panini’s ‘Middle Eastern and Venetian Glass Beads - Eighth to Twentieth Centuries’ (2007). The subject of the photo is not identified, but is most likely from Ghana or Côte d'Ivoire.

An eloquent description of the Akori bead is given in 1874 by British explorer and journalist, Fredrick Boyle:

“No one knows exactly where this jewel of West Africa was made. It is dug up from the earth, somewhere in the interior, and forms part, no doubt, of sepulchral ornaments. It is of various shapes, and shows almost every combination of colour, but fashion ordains that the yellow varieties shall be most esteemed. Endless are the patterns upon the ground colour, stripes and spots, and rosettes, and a little device which looks like a flower. Most observers have concluded that the material is porcelain, and many believe that the pattern is produced by mosaic work. It certainly goes all through, and this peculiarity it is which drives European imitators to their wits' ends… In fact the aggrey bead so famous and so valuable is of that substance which has been called ‘Egyptian porcelain’, and every Nile traveller has had offered him for sixpence, a dozen of the beads worth five to ten shillings apiece on the West Coast.” — Fredrick Boyle (1874), Through Fanteeland to Coomassie: A diary of the Ashantee expedition

As you might anticipate from Boyle’s description above, the specific origin of the Akori bead is the subject of fierce debate by historians and archeologists alike. The term “Akori” is interesting in itself, as the word has no easily ascertainable meaning in west African languages nor European ones. Instead, the term seems to originate from a phonetic misspelling by Europeans of the Twī word “cori” which translates to “blue coral” (Twī is a native language of Ghana). We see the terms “agrie”, “aggrey”, “accori”, and “akori” first appearing in the writings of European explorers, detailing their experiences in west Africa. For instance, Willem Bosman, a Dutch official on the Coast of Guinea from 1688 to 1702, described the beads as “a sort of blew Coral, which we call Agrie, and the Negroes Accorri, which being moderately large, is so much valued, that 'tis generally weighed against Gold.”

These early European accounts of interactions along the coast of west Africa provide a limited, but nevertheless interesting perspective on the origins of the term “Akori bead”. Over time, the term came to describe many different kinds of valuable beads in west Africa.

Trade in Akori beads prior to European influence

Prior to the arrival of Europeans in the 15th Century, Western Africa traced deep trade links with the mediterranean world, with the Akori bead potentially providing a key medium of exchange in the trans-Saharan trade. Indeed, there is significant evidence that blue beads resembling the Akori bead were a dominant form of money in the ancient west African empire of Wagadou (also referred to as the “Ghana Empire” located in present-day Mauritania) from 300 AD until the early 1200s.

The ubiquitous presence of the Akori bead is illustrated by several ancient Arabian sources. For instance, Yāqūt Al-Hamawi’s Dictionary of Countries or Mu'jam al-Buldan (circa 1124), which attempts to summarise all medieval knowledge of the physical world, describes merchants from Siljilmasa (a medieval Moroccan city) travelling to the ancient Ghana Empire. The merchants carried with them an assortment of goods for trade, including glass beads. Yākūt writes:

“Their wares are salt, bundles of pine wood… blue glass beads, bracelets of red copper, bangles and signet rings of copper, and nothing else.” — Yāqūt Al-Hamawi (1124)

Yākūt’s account is corroborated by Ibn Battuta, the legendary 13th Century Moroccan scholar and explorer in his extraordinary memoir, A Gift to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Traveling (circa 1354). An excerpt from Buttata’s work provides practical advice for those journeying to Wagadou (the ancient Ghana Empire):

“The traveler, in these countries has no need to burden himself with provisions for the mouth, or mets or ducats, nor of drachmas; one must carry with him a morsel of rock salt, ornaments or trinkets of glass, which they call nazhm.” — Ibn Battuta (1354)

The final word here “nazhm” can be translated from Arabic to mean “blue bead” or “eye bead”.

From the above sources, in addition to archaeological evidence, we can begin to imagine the role of Akori beads as an early form of money allowing for trade and commerce to prosper across the ancient citadels of Western Africa, from Kumbi Saleh (Ghana Empire), to Gao (Mali Empire), and Sijimasa (Almoravid Empire).

A map of the Trans-Saharan citadels and trade routes of the 13th Century. Archeological evidence indicates that Kumbi Saleh was likely the capital of the ancient Ghana Empire, while Gao was the capital of the Mali Empire. Source: Asia's Maritime Bead Trade: 300 B.C. to the Present (2002), Peter Francis.

European imitation, hyperinflation & the slave trade

Now, let’s turn our attention to the imperial endeavours of Europeans in west Africa. It’s difficult to overstate the significance of Akori beads in the transatlantic slave trade. By many estimates, from 1500 to 1870, between 15 million and 20 million slaves were shipped from Africa to the Americas, in exchange for beads, cloth, copper, iron and gold. The vast majority of these beads were manufactured in Europe specifically to imitate the design of Akori beads.

From the earliest interactions of the Portuguese slave traders with indigenous nations along the west coast of Africa, we can trace the importance of Akori beads. For instance, Jean Barbot, who served as a commercial agent on French slave-trading voyages to West Africa from 1678 to 1682, writes:

“The main export of this Coast was slaves, cotton cloth and blue stones, called agoy or accorry, very valuable on the Gold Coast [modern-day Ghana].” — Jean Barbot (1732), A Description of the Coasts of North and South Guinea

Additionally, Barbot provides a detailed description of the price paid for “two-hundred and twelve slaves, men, women, boys and girls”, which includes “beads: five hundred and forty-six pounds; four pounds making a bunch”. To this day, Akori beads are often referred to as “slave beads” in British, French, and Dutch texts, stemming from their role in facilitating the purchase of slaves from the Gold Coast (modern-day Ghana), along the Bight of Benin, to the mouth of the River Niger. This coastal region was referred to by colonists as the “Slave Coast of West Africa” into the 1900s.

This map from 1914 published by John Bartholomew & Son (a long-established Edinburgh-based mapping company) still refers to the western coast of Africa as “Slave Coast” (source).

In Europe, from the 15th Century onwards, beads played no monetary role and glass-making technology was commonplace, while the same technology was rare in west Africa. This created a disastrous dynamic for the local African populations, whereby European merchants imported glass beads manufactured in Venice (and later Birmingham) and traded these beads for scarce resources, including slaves. Anthropologist, Arnold Cardinall, unwittingly captures this perverse market dynamic:

“To-day this particular bead, which was manufactured by the Societa Veneziana per L’Industria delle Conterie of Venice in the fifties of the last century, is being eagerly searched for and bought by Ashantis [a nation of Ghana], who have found a market for it in their home towns. I have met members of this enterprising nation on their way north to the Niger either to Gao, or to Timbuktu with the sole purpose of buying these beads and others which we would call aggrey.” — Arnold Cardinall (1925), Aggrey Beads of the Gold Coast

Perhaps, the most interesting illustration of the erosion of the purchasing power of Akori beads is given by the discovery of the Henrietta Marie ship wreck. The Henrietta was a slave ship that carried captive Africans to the West Indies. The ship wrecked in 1700 on its return to Britain, but was only discovered by divers in 1972. To the surprise of maritime archeologists, the wrecked ship held over 30,000 glass beads in its hull.

An investigation of the wreck and corresponding diary entries from Jean Barbot (a French slave trader and owner of the Henrietta’s twin vessel, Albion' Frigate), were used to determine the origin of the beads. Manufactured in Venice, 10 pounds of these beads could be used to purchase one slave (and in total, the beads on the Henrietta weighed 2,074 pounds). This discovery clearly illustrates how imitation Akori beads, manufactured in Europe, were used to facilitate the transatlantic slave trade, and in doing so, naturally led to hyper-inflation of the money supply.

Imitation Akori beads found in the hull of the wreckage of Henrietta Marie, a British slave ship. 30,000 of the glass beads were recovered from the wreck. On the right, we see iron shackles, called Bilboes, used by slavers to restrain captives below deck in pairs. Source: Mel Fisher Maritime Museum.

The proliferation of imitation Akori beads eventually came to be well understood by indigenous peoples. Today, these imitation beads are collectively referred to as “koli” beads in Twī (also called “ekeur” beads in the Fante dialect of coastal Ghana). However, by the time local populations learned of the inflationary impact of the importation of these beads, a transfer of wealth from west African nations (those that could not produce glass beads cheaply) to European nations (those that could produce glass beads cheaply) had already taken place. Akori beads slowly lost their monetary value over time, as imitation beads flooded local west African markets.

Akori beads in west Africa today

Today across several countries of west Africa, including Ghana, Benin, Ivory Coast, Nigeria and Guinea, beads of several forms play an important role in cultural ceremonies, even though they play no formal role as currency.

In Ghana, the adorning of Akori beads is an essential element of the journey into womanhood of Krobo women (from the Eastern region of Ghana) in the traditional Dipo Ceremony. On the final day of the ceremony, the initiates, referred to as dipo-yo, are dressed in beautiful kente cloth, and adorned in Akori beads around their neck, waists, and arms. The decorative bead industry still thrives in the Krobo region of Ghana, particularly in the lead up to Dipo.

Similarly, in Nigeria coral beads play an important role in traditional marriage ceremonies, particularly in Yoruba and Igbo culture. Along with cloth, sheep, and goats, decorative coral beads form a substantial part of the dowry transferred from the bride’s family to the grooms family during the wedding ceremony. The beads used in these ceremonies are referred to as Iyun, Lagidigba, or Àkún, but rarely as Akori beads (the term “Akori” is more common in Ghana, Guinea, and Benin). However, the beads share many similarities with Akori, such as mosaic designs, and illustrious blue, green, and yellow colour-ways.

A Krobo woman of the eastern region of Ghana is adorned with Akori beads as part of the Dipo Ceremony, celebrating her transition into Womanhood. Captured by photographer, Nyani Quarmyne.

Final thoughts

As we enter a new period of monetary experimentation in the form of quantitative easing ad infinitum, it is important to reflect on the lessons of the past. Money printing is not a new invention, it is an ancient peril.

The story of the Akori bead is one of insidious plunder. Hyper-inflation of supply in the market for these beads, orchestrated by European slave traders and merchants, led to a long-term wealth transfer from west Africa to Europe, and eroded the purchasing power of indigenous peoples. This slowly unwound the basic fabric of communities, and paved the way for colonisation.

Today, the annualised inflation rate in Zimbabwe is approaching 1,000%, reducing the US dollar value of the monthly pay for the average high school teacher to $30 (as of July 2020). In South Africa, the Reserve Bank announced in late March that it will embark on its own experiments with quantitative easing, printing South African Rand to buy government debt. This policy is unlikely to boost economic growth; instead it is highly likely to cause a devaluation of the Rand against the US dollar. As a result of these developments, I fear that we’re on the brink of entering a new period of hyper-inflation in many African states. If this comes to fruition, the consequences will be devastating. Now, more than ever, we need courageous leadership and thoughtful policies to solve these problems, otherwise we risk repeating tragedies of the past.

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References & further reading

Books

Augusto Panini (2007), Middle Eastern and Venetian Glass Beads - Eighth to Twentieth Centuries (read more)

Fredrick Boyle (1874), Through Fanteeland to Coomassie: A diary of the Ashantee expedition (read more)

Ibn Battuta (~1354), A Gift to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Traveling (read more and complete translation)

Ila Pokornowski (1974), Social Significance of African Beads: Case Studies of the Yoruba and Bini Peoples (read more)

Jean Barbot (1732), A Description of the Coasts of North and South Guinea (read more)

Martin Hall & Stephen Silliman (2006), Historical Archaeology (read more)

Peter Francis (2002), Asia's Maritime Bead Trade: 300 B.C. to the Present (read more)

Willem Bosman (1704), A New and Accurate Description of the Coast of Guinea (read more)

Saifedean Ammous (2018), The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking (read more)

Yāqūt Al-Hamawi (1124), Dictionary of Countries (or Mu'jam al-Buldan) (read more)

Articles

Arnold Cardinall (1925), ‘Aggrey Beads of the Gold Coast’, Journal of the Royal African Society’ (Vol. 24, No. 96) (read more)

Anon (2020) ‘For a few dollars more: Zimbabwe’s worst economic crisis in more than a decade’, The Economist (read more)

David Moore & Corey Malcom (2008), ‘Seventeenth-Century Vehicle of the Middle Passage: Archaeological and Historical Investigations on the “Henrietta Marie” Shipwreck Site’, International Journal of Historical Archaeology (Vol. 12, No. 1) (read more)

Milan Kalous (1966), ‘A Contribution to the Problem of Akori Beads’, The Journal of African History (Vol. 7, No. 1) (read more)

Milan Kalous (1979), ‘Akorite?’, The Journal of African History (Vol. 20, No. 2) (read more)

Nick Szabo (2002), ‘Shelling Out: The Origins of Money’, Satoshi Nakamoto Institute (read more)

Suzanne Gott (2014), ‘Ghana's Class Beadmaking Arts in Transcultural Dialogues’, African Arts (Vol. 47, No. 1) (read more)