Originally Posted by
Fizzwizz
Just tentatively putting out some feelers.
I'm a semi-retired doctor looking to spend 6 months a year in the UK working, and 6 months a year doing some travelling/volunteering in Africa.
I wonder if there's a way I can combine my love of flying with voluntary medical/medical-educational voluntary work in rural Africa?
Pay is not required - free flying is always a gift, but I'm also happy to invest money in further training, and could even take my own aircraft ( 2 seater bush plane).
Any thoughts?
Positive answers only please.
Kindest regards ... Shaun
I'm afraid virtually no chance of that. African aviation is highly regulated these days - partly for good reasons, but almost more to put in a good framework for extracting bribes from aviation. Nobody will allow you to fly a local registed aircraft on a CAA PPL(A). Also there are in most african countries plenty of local pilots who would object to an expat taking a potential job from them. Taking your own aircraft is also out of the question - you could transit through Africa (with a lot of headache and paperwork and hefty bills) but to fly internally you would need to import the aircraft (massive bills!) and in a lot of countries register it on the local register.
The most positive I can suggest is to volunteer as a doctor in an area which uses single-pilot aircraft to fly to remote strips - and you could probably get a bit of stick time in RHS from friendly pilots who enjoy having another pilot along.
I have for example seen single-pilot operations in El Fasher in the Dafur region and I am sure they are desperately short of doctors - but really I don't think it would be much fun to go there!
In nicer parts of Africa (Kenya, Botswana) there is a lot of single-pilot transport of passengers and I expect they occasionally need to take doctors out and about. But you would need to get work first as a doctor and then network from there and you could perhaps be seen as a first-call when a doctor is needed.
That is about as postive as it gets - sorry!