- Africa is home to 65 percent of the world’s uncultivated fertile land, but millions sleep hungry daily.
- Amini Corp seeks to address the scarcity of data in Africa as well as facilitate capital investment.
- The scarcity of high-quality environmental data prevents others from building climate solutions such as farmer insurance schemes.
Amini Corp, a Kenyan-based climate tech startup, has raised $2 million in pre-seed funding which it plans to channel into developing an environmental data platform for Africa. The funding was secured through an oversubscribed round led by top European Climate Tech Fund, Pale Blue Dot.
Other investors in the venture are Superorganism, RaliCap, W3i, Emurgo Kepple Ventures and angel investors from the global tech community.
Amini Corp seeks to address the scarcity of data in Africa as well as facilitate capital investment. The company also promotes climate resilience, and helps accelerate economic development opportunities in the region.
An increasing number of startups in Africa are tapping the power of technology to solve challenges on the continent.
Amini Corp seeks to provide reliable and trustworthy data
According to statistics, despite having the world’s most significant agriculture-based exports, Africa is home to 65 percent of the world’s uncultivated fertile land. The continent, which accounts for a partly 3 percent of the world GDP, has 30 percent of all mineral resources on earth.
A standout challenge exacerbating this disparity in Africa is due to lack of reliable and trustworthy data. With unreliable data, Africa, a continent of 1.2 billion people, continues to lag behind in terms of development. Challenges associated with unavailability of reliable data keep hampering business decisions and capital allocation. What more, lack of data is now making it difficult to measure the impact of climate change, and that’s what Amini Corp seeks to solve. The company was founded by Kate Kallot.
In just six months of operation, Amini Corp has set up a vibrant data aggregation and analytics platform. The company is capable of collecting, unifying, and processing satellite data, weather data, and other types of data down to a square meter.
Heidi Lindvall, General Partner, Pale Blue Dot, said: “The scarcity of high-quality environmental data of Africa is a concern. It prevents others from building important climate solutions such as improving farmer insurance, monitoring climate risk or supply chains. When meeting the team behind Amini we were blown away by their ambition and expertise. We believe they are best positioned to fill the environmental data gap of Africa”
Amini has a strong track record of using deep technologies to tackle challenges specific to Africa, showcasing a unique blend of talent and expertise. Kate Kallot, the founder and CEO of Amini, has over a decade of leadership experience in driving global innovation in artificial intelligence and machine learning at tech giants like Intel, Arm, and NVIDIA.
Company offers valuable environmental data analytics
The firm’s platform offers players in the industry access to valuable environmental data analytics, including drought, flood, soil and crop health. This data can be processed to forecast crop yields for millions of smallholder farmers in mere seconds. Equally, the data can be used in assessing the impact of natural disasters such as floods across the region.
Despite Africa’s immense resources and heavy reliance on agriculture, the continent remains food insecure. According to Kate, one of the reasons why Africa is underutilizing its resources is due to lack of reliable data.
Read also: What to expect from newly launched Nigerian Petroleum Corp.
This fact has significantly affected the continent’s progress. Insufficient or inaccurate data has led to uneven capital allocation. Enter climate change-related challenges and unreliable data is leading to the loss of lives. For instance, farmers are not getting timely data to plant appropriate crops.
Kate said, “The lack of data infrastructure for Africa, from the inability to collect data to analyze it and its impact, is a deeper problem than most realize. If you look at climate or environmental data in Africa today, it’s either nonexistent or difficult to access. And with climate change projected to hit Africa the most, there’s a lack of data for farmers, for instance, to understand what’s happening.” Overall, Amini Corp is a climate tech startup built to inform making of better decisions on agriculture.
Amini Corp uses AI-powered data collection tools
The climate tech startup has taken some steps to achieve Africa’s environmental improvements. Amini Corp designed a sophisticated data collection and analysis tool that utilizes Artificial Intelligence and satellite technology.
This combination is the engine behind the climate tech startups’ ability to collect accurate data and predictions that farmers can use to improve their crop yield. Kate designed Amini Corp to address Africa’s data scarcity, facilitate capital investments and promote environmental improvements alongside accelerating economic development.
Initially, Amini Corp targeted agriculture insurance sector using granular, verifiable, actionable data that enhanced small-scale farmers’ resilience through cover. Despite being one of Africa’s highest-earning economic activities, agriculture has significantly deteriorated due to climate change.
Read also: Kenya: Transport demand in Nairobi leads MetroTrans to acquire buses worth US$3.3 million.
Incorporating AI enables the platform to process and extract environmental data analytics, including drought, food, soil and crop health. Their system can process different data types to forecast the crop yields of millions of small-scale farmers in mere seconds.
Within less than a year, the organization has expanded its operations into supply chain monitoring, focusing its efforts on the initial stage of the global supply chain. The move will significantly improve its capabilities as well as its market.
Additionally, multinationals seeking to identify their carbon footprint and ability to report on their environmental impact can turn to Amini. For instance, the SEC Climate Disclosure rules and the European Green Deal allow the organization to expand its global reach.
Read: Tanzania and Acacia: The Mining Ban that produced millions.
By securing the $2 million financing, Amini Corp has set the bar for innovation. It is now the first African company to be accepted into the Seraphim Space Accelerator Programme. This selection is only available to a few and only scouts from the top two percent of global early-stage space companies.
