William Elong, 26-year-old Cameroonian, who in September 2018 featured on Forbes Magazine list of the most influential Africans under the age of 30 for a second time, has announced the closing of a fundraising launched last year. The Chief Executive Officer of Will & Brothers Consulting disclosed that the operation is ending with a total of 2 million Euros (circa FCFA 1.3 billion) collected. The funds, he said, will facilitate the expansion of his Drone Africa project which currently boasts of 20 tech-savvy employees from Cameroon, Kenya and Cote d’Ivoire producing the ‘Made in Cameroon’ drones.

The youngster who recently launched a company in Germany known as Algo Holding also disclosed that the money donated mostly by foreigners will equally facilitate the expansion of the new enterprise’s research and development component.

The first drones produced by Will & Brothers were presented in Yaounde on February 2, 2018, and according to the boss of the company, they have so far received orders from customers in Central and West Africa as well as 50 contracts continent-wide, including surveillance of construction work on the Olembe Stadium being constructed by Italian company, Piccini and surveillance of agricultural projects for CRIFAT.

Going by Elong, they received more orders in the last quarter of 2018 than they could handle, to the extent that the company was obliged to make some adjustments and sub-contracted part of the building of the drones to technical partners, while preserving the Drone Africa Made in Cameroon trademark. The company announced in 2018 that it would create subsidiaries in the US and France in order to exploit the European and American markets if they succeeded to raise the funds sought. Worthy of note is the fact that besides making drones, Elong also has another high tech product on the market known as Cyclop, an artificial intelligence innovation.