Jonathan Ledgard, a British citizen and novelist who spent 10 year as Africa correspondent for The Economist, is no stranger to the needs of the continent when it comes to transportation.

That’s why he is building a drone company based in Rwanda.

According to Ledgard, “robots in the sky” are the best solution to the continent’s poor transport infrastructure that has made medical and other humanitarian assistance to people difficult.

“Flying robots carrying stuff is inevitable on a crowded planet in the 21st century,” Ledgard told Swiss Info, adding that populations are growing so quickly that traditional government infrastructure projects can’t keep up.

His drone project, named the Red Line, will seek to fly pints of blood and other medical supplies in war and accident points in a safe and fast way. The project is mostly being designed and funded by Swiss universities and businesses, with support from some counterparts in Africa, the United Kingdom and Silicon Valley.

“In Africa, if you have severe anaemia or had a trauma of any kind, you’re probably going to die because there’s just not enough blood available…it doesn’t travel well,” he said.

The company, which he plans to launch this year, will later on venture into commercial transport under a second version he calls the Blue Line.

Another of Ledgard’s main goals is developing laws for the use of transport drones in Rwanda that are “simple, safe, secure and which can be applied in many other countries, especially poorer ones where the road system isn’t going to get built out”.

There is currently no international legislation governing the use of transport drones, and Rwanda would be the first country to develop such a legal framework within its own borders.

The tiny East African nation is set to become the home to the world’s first ever drone port once Switzerland-based research organization Afrotech and U.K. architect Foster + Partner constructs more than 40 drone ports they’ve proposed to build in the country.

Ledgard say his team chose Rwanda because of its stable political environment, thanks in part to its current president Paul Kagame, who has helped transform the country into an tech powerhouse in Africa since the end of the 1994 genocide.

“… we get land and airspace, and we have a very supportive government and a strong relationship with the national university in Rwanda to get young engineers in on the project.” he said.

Lukas Zürcher, a historian at the University of Zurich specialising in African and development history, told Swiss Info that “At the moment, Rwanda is very interested in positioning itself as a top developing country…it doesn’t have any natural resources and sees potential in becoming a sort of technology hub”.