Soaring aspirations of Myanmar’s drone buffs

YANGON, Dec. 23

In a ramshackle workshop behind a bustling Yangon market, Kyi Tha fixes the plastic propeller of a home-made drone, one of a growing number of enthusiasts refusing to let poverty clip the wings of their hi-tech dreams.

A new generation of creative young inventors have turned to the Internet to catch up with the rest of the world, after years of isolation under junta rule left the country with little access to engineering expertise or cutting-edge technology.

“Studying drone technology is not easy in Myanmar. So we watched videos about it on YouTube,” said Kyi Tha, admitting he watch clips for months, patiently enduring notoriously slow web connections in his search for knowledge.

“First we did not have any success, but after experimenting for one year we could do many things,” he told AFP.

Kyi Tha, 26, and his cousin Thet San, 30, have transformed a modest wooden home into the nerve-centre of their engineering and technology business, Myanmar Future Science.

A workbench in the backyard is cluttered with the signs of feverish invention — boxes of screws, aluminium rods, and the body of a model aeroplane.

Their firm makes its money providing engineering services to the government and private firms, using drones and model aircraft to conduct aerial surveys for maps and assessments of agricultural areas.

But their passion is opening up the world of technology to fellow budding inventors. They have a little shop in their garden packed with tiny motors, propellers and plastic body-parts for drones, planes and radio-controlled cars.

Myanmar’s youth are eager to keep up with the latest technological developments, but are often held back by poverty — a legacy of decades under junta rule.

A new ready-made drone could set you back up to 300,000 kyats (around $230), far beyond the financial reach most young people in Myanmar, where the World Bank puts average annual income per capita at $1,270.

But enterprising gadget builders rely on creativity to keep their costs down to just $10.