The African Plane In Senegal Made From Recycled Materials

A Senegalese inventor-Baila Ndiaye has put together used body parts of cars known as scraps to produce an ultra-light aircraft, hoping to make it Africa’s first flying object in the air made by a single person.

Ndiaye has already built a car entirely out of the same recycled materials. Local media said the 51-year-old Ndiaye settled in France after finishing high school in Senegal. He set up a company in Mulhouse that specialized in electronics after his studied in France, before returning to Senegal 15 years later. He then embarked on a mission to build ‘Syndiély’-a single-seater car made entirely from scraps.

According to him, he wanted to prove to the world that it’s possible “to make what we want using only what we’ve got”.

In very philosophical statement, he told the French Television-France24 “In Africa, we need more machines in order to develop. That leaves us two solutions: either buy them and get into debt, or build them ourselves with materials that we already have”.

He also recounted how he started his first project and completed despite the negative comments he received from close friends and associates.

“When I was 6 or 7, as I didn’t have any toys, I had crafted a little car using pieces of iron wire. In a way, I rebuilt the car of my childhood when I built Syndiély. To build it, I went to ask people if they had the parts that I needed. At the beginning, they made fun of me and thought it was just a pipe dream. That’s the reason why I worked alone on the project at the time. In the end, I finally managed to salvage all the materials I needed. The car and motorcycle parts came from all kinds of models and were originally headed for the scrap yard. For example, I re-used the motor of a broken motorbike, and the front axles of a Peugeot 205”, he said.

When the aircraft is completed, it will have a wingspan of 13 metres. To take off, it’ll only need a 100-metre long runway. It will be able to fly at around 100km/h, consuming five litres of fuel every 100 kilometres for a maximum flight-time of five hours. It could therefore fly over 250 kilometres before having to turn around and fly back. It will also be able to take up to 200kg of weight. Gradually, the African technology revolution will gain momentum if people like Ndiaye are supported by governments across the continent.

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