The Government of Côte d’Ivoire has approved an eight-year public-private partnership with Zipline to expand the country’s AI-enabled healthcare logistics network from one distribution centre in Daloa to ten nationwide.
The expansion, led by Côte d’Ivoire’s Ministry of Health under Minister Pierre N’Gou Dimba and supported in part by a $150 million pay-for-performance award from the U.S. Department of State, will build one of Africa’s largest national deployments of AI and robotics in healthcare. Once fully rolled out, the network is projected to serve more than 2,200 health facilities and over 12 million people, create hundreds of skilled jobs, and deliver an estimated return on investment of roughly 300%.
This comes amid a broader continental push by Zipline, which now operates in five African markets: Rwanda, Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya and Côte d’Ivoire. The company is scaling similarly in Nigeria, where it plans to grow from three to 15 distribution hubs by 2028, targeting 20,000 health facilities and nearly 100 million people, a plan it disclosed earlier this year. Both expansions draw on the same U.S. government pay-for-performance funding model, which backs Zipline’s African rollout on the condition that host governments commit to funding ongoing operations themselves.
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The company is reportedly in talks to raise about $1 billion at a roughly $20 billion valuation. Paradigm is discussing leading the round, with prior backer Tiger Global Management also weighing participation, according to Bloomberg. That figure would nearly triple the $7.6 billion valuation Zipline set earlier this year. The company has also been expanding commercially, including an August partnership and investment from Uber to help scale the ride-hailing company’s food delivery business. Its broader push into consumer delivery, food orders in 30 minutes or less, sits alongside its public health logistics work in markets like Côte d’Ivoire and Nigeria.
The Côte d’Ivoire expansion aligns with the country’s “Vision 2030” agenda to scale universal health coverage, bringing blood products, vaccines, essential medicines and emergency supplies to communities that need them, including rural and hard-to-reach areas that become harder to serve during the rainy season.
Since launching in Daloa in 2023, Zipline has delivered more than 3.55 million medical products to over 220 health facilities across five regions of Côte d’Ivoire, including about 2 million vaccine doses and 20,500 units of blood products, which the company estimates have contributed to more than 2,000 equivalent lives saved.
“Since Zipline began operating in Daloa, we have seen shorter delivery times, improved availability of vital products, and stronger support for our health facilities. By expanding to 10 distribution centres, Côte d’Ivoire is taking a proven model nationwide and bringing essential healthcare directly to the communities that need it,” Dimba said.
Each Zipline distribution centre combines warehousing, cold storage, inventory management, autonomous drone delivery, and digital tracking, letting health facilities order supplies as needed rather than relying on scheduled road deliveries or holding large stock. The Ministry of Health gets real-time visibility into orders, inventory, and deliveries, helping it anticipate demand, reduce stockouts and expiries, protect the cold chain, and respond faster in emergencies.
Under the funding structure, the U.S. government provides upfront infrastructure financing to Zipline, while the Côte d’Ivoire government has committed to covering ongoing operations, an approach designed to make the expansion financially durable and nationally led over the long term.
Zipline Africa CEO Caitlin Burton described the partnership as a case of US catalytic public funding and Ivorian government leadership combining to build national-scale infrastructure that the country will finance long-term.
Xavier Greusard, the company’s Vice President for Africa Go-To-Market, said the buildout is meant to create an Ivorian-led logistics ecosystem, with local teams trained across pharmacy, aviation operations, maintenance, logistics, engineering, and data management.
Last updated: September 22, 2026
