Its quite possible to build a drone using off the shelf parts that can stay up for a few hours, at least. The rcgroups.com forums are full of such things, and whats interesting is that the pace of drone technology is really represented in such forums as rcgroups.com .. I myself have the parts available to build a flying spy platform that I could field over my lake and surrounding orchard for probably a few hours. Its not that far-fetched, and frankly with all the extraordinary designs for micro foam builds available on the Internet, I'd be surprised if African nations don't suddenly find themselves inundated with drone tech from the slums. They've got all the old CD-ROM drives they need to boot up a small fleet, anyway ..