The technology isn’t new, but the method of delivery is.

Until now, manned aircraft have been delivering male tsetse flies that were raised in labs and sterilized using radiation to infested areas of Ethiopia. Released in the wild, the males mate with fertile females, making them unproductive.

Sterilization has proven successful in lowering the birthrate for a pest responsible for one of Africa’s most devastating parasitic diseases — trypanosomiasis, or sleeping sickness.

A Spanish company hopes to make money using drones to deliver sterile tsetse flies to Ethiopia. If it works, malaria could be the next frontier, according to a report in PopularScience.

Drones can fly lower and longer than manned aircraft, and disperse flies through an area more evenly than planes, the company said. Each drone flight can release 5,000 flies in frozen, biodegradable boxes from an altitude of 1000 feet, covering an area of about 40 square miles.

Spanish dronemaker Embention put together the project, “Drones Against Tsetse,” together with the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is interested in radiation. The IAEA promotes the peaceful use of nuclear technology in scientific research and is pioneering sterile insect technique research in many countries, according to Motherboard.

Sterile insect technique got attention in recent years as a possible way to control the spread of malaria.

African trypanosomiasis occurs in 36 sub-Saharan African countries. Around 10,000 new human cases are reported each year, but many go undiagnosed, according to YourGenome.org.

There is no vaccine and travelers who visit game parks are at risk, Centers for Disease Control reported.

The disease is often fatal in livestock, affecting an estimated 3 million animals in sub-Saharan Africa each year and threatening food security, The Guardian reported.

Agriculture accounts for 43 percent of Ethiopia’s gross domestic product and provides 85 percent of its employment, according to Motherboard.

In Ethiopia, some 200,000 km2 (77,220 square miles) of fertile land with plenty of rain-fed irrigation is underused because of tsetse infestation, according to Rafael Argiles-Herrero, an entomologist at the IAEA. Tsetse-swarmed areas will be the drones’ target.

Ethiopia is rearing tsetse flies at a facility in Addis Ababa. Until now, the project has relied on people manually dropping fly boxes from an airplane over Ethiopia’s Deme River Basin, a 1,000-km2 (386-square-mile) tsetse fly hotspot.

The drone is being promoted as a way of making the process cheaper, safer, and more precise. “To be effective, they need to fly every day, so the cost involved in it decreases a lot, because you don’t really need a trained pilot for this,” said Javier Espuch, a member of the five-person team that developed the drone, in a Motherboard  interview.

Rafael Argiles-Herrero, an entomologist at the IAEA. By repeatedly dropping non-breeders into the midst of wild swarms, the drone will gradually weaken localised populations of tsetse flies.

Scientists cracked the genetic code of the tsetse fly in 2014, making eradication a real possibility, according to the World Health Organization.

The WHO said in 2014 it considered the disease to be entering a “phase of elimination.” In 2013, 5,967 cases were reported compared with 26,574 cases in 2000, according to the Guardian.

In livestock, a single tsetse bite can lead to reduced fertility and problems with weight loss and milk production. Animals get too weak to be used for plowing or transport, making it more difficult for farmers to grow crops.

No vaccine exists because the parasite evades mammals’ immune systems. Control methods have involve mostly trapping, pesticides and sterilizing male flies using radiation.

African communities most at risk of trypanosomiasis live in rural areas where the tsetse fly is found, YourGenome reported. They often have limited access to education and health services, and depend on agriculture, fishing and hunting to survive.

Embention’s drone prototype has been tried in Spain and awaits approval for use in Ethiopia to seed wild populations with their sterilized male flies, Motherboard reported:

The radiated flies will be loaded into boxes enclosed within long chambers that sit below the drone’s wings, explains Javier Espuch, one member of the five-strong team who developed the drone. Flying autonomously, the machine follows pre-set coordinates that pinpoint areas known to be infested with the insects: “When the drone reaches that area it automatically drops the flies,” says Espuch. The biodegradable, open-sided boxes free the insects as they fall.

Boxes can be released from the wing pod at pre-arranged intervals, to control and maximise the spread of radiated insects according to each location. “Release rates can be adjusted for conditions in specific areas, something that is useful in areas with complicated topography,” said Rafael Argiles-Herrero, an entomologist at the IAEA. By repeatedly dropping non-breeders into the midst of wild swarms, the drone will gradually weaken localised populations of tsetse flies.

When the Embention prototype is approved and hits the skies in Ethiopia in coming months, it will be capable of introducing 5,000 sterile insects per flight.

If all goes well, malaria could be the drone’s next frontier, Motherboard reported.

“The same release system can be used for sterile mosquitoes,” said Argiles-Herrero.