Solving for Africa’s Environmental Data Scarcity with Amini
We are thrilled to welcome the latest addition to the Female Founders Fund portfolio, Amini — an AI start-up led by Kate Kallot, recently named 2023’s Time 100 Most Influential People in AI.
Kate and her team are building the pre-eminent African environmental data collection and intelligence infrastructure providing global corporates with a granular, scalable purpose-built data solution for challenging supply chain first-mile environments.
We sat down with Amini founder and CEO Kate Kallot to discuss solving for Africa’s data gap, Amini’s impact, her long term vision for the company, and more.
What is Amini?
Amini is building the environmental data infrastructure for Africa and the Tropical Belt. Our mission is to close Africa’s environmental data gap using cutting-edge satellite and AI technologies. Our core expertise lies in collecting and processing earth observation data, enabling us to deliver reliable and actionable insights, especially in agriculture and environmental monitoring. Our mission is to empower businesses and communities across Africa with precise and timely data, driving informed decision-making and sustainable growth.
Why are you the right founder to fix Africa’s data gap?
Although I grew up in France, I spent most of my summers coming back to the continent every year where my family is from. I’ve spent most of my career working in AI/ML for Intel, Arm and NVIDIA. I’ve always been passionate and driven by this will to use technology to affect meaningful change on the African continent. My years as Head of Dev Relations at both Arm and NVIDIA, taught me about how different developers in different parts of the world are solving challenges that are related to what they and their communities see and experience every day.
I learned that innovation is not just about creating the best and new shiny tech but comes also from the way you apply tech differently. This is particularly relevant to Africa where most of the AI innovation is bottom up, comes from grassroot initiatives driven out of developers and startups. At Amini, we’re leveraging my experience driving deep tech innovation in the US to develop solutions that are not only technologically advanced but also tailored to meet the specific needs of the African market. And I’m very proud to be giving these developers a home to land to continue building for challenges that are uniquely Africans.
You describe Africa as the last and largest emerging market opportunity, as well the most data scarce continent. What are the most important consequences of this scarcity, and how does Amini aim to bridge this gap?
Africa represents the last and biggest emerging market, think about Africa as to where Southeast Asia was 20 years ago. A few stats about the continent: 60% of our population are smallholder farmers. Africa represents 65% of the world’s uncultivated fertile land. Most of the coffee we drink and the chocolate we eat comes from Africa… Agriculture is the pulmon of of African economies. Africa’s population is extremely young, as 60% are under 25 years old. And by 2050, 1/4th of all humans on earth will be living on the African continent. It is really the largest and biggest opportunity for the decades to come.
However, Africa is still the most data scarce continent. The data scarcity spans across many different types of data: Ground data, Weather data (only 1/8th of the recommended weather stations density by WMO), Space data… The digital infrastructure we take for granted in other parts of the world including sats are not designed for Africa. There is no single source of truth for African environmental data.
That data scarcity is impacting policymakers, businesses, especially large private sector corporates who are pressed by regulations coming into play forcing them to understand what is happening at the very first mile of their supply chain to reduce carbon emissions e.g. understanding coffee and cocoa farmers practices.
More importantly it’s impacting the people. Out of these hundred of millions of farmers only 20% have access to any kind of insurance. This is making them vulnerable to climate change which is impacting economic development, livelihoods, food security. These are continental scale issues caused by the data scarcity. But it’s not just a concern for Africa but for the entire planet which is being fed by agricultural commodities from Africa. You can’t solve climate change if you don’t solve smallholder farming in Africa. And this starts with data.
Who are Amini’s target consumers?
Data is scalable and every business, stakeholders and people throughout the world including you and I rely on data for decision making every day. Therefore, the data we collect can be used by multiple consumers. Our focus though is on large corporates with agricultural supply chains on the continent. Think food, beverage, apparel companies who rely on these commodities. They now have to move their sourcing from responsible to regenerative for both our planet and our people and Amini is helping them do just that. We’ve also found customers in the insurance and government sectors who need our data to increase climate resilience and better food security.
How did you learn about FFF? Why did you decide to bring FFF on as investors?
Anu reached out to me after my nomination in TIME Magazine. I also have to admit that our head of BD who is Indian and grew up in Kenya is a huge fan of Anu and was so excited for me to connect with her! We were not planning to fundraise but Anu can be quite convincing! The more we started to talk and the more we were convinced that FFF was the right fit for Amini.
Our cap table is made of amazing humans who support our mission and are not afraid to challenge the status quo for what they believe to be right. That’s what FFF is doing through their fund and that’s what we at Amini, we believe in as well. Given all this, it was natural for us to decide to bring on FFF as investors. And we’re really excited to break the limits of what’s possible together.
What is your long-term vision for Amini?
Ultimately data is at the core of any major economic transformation. If we go onto solving the environmental data scarcity for Africa, you will see a much different Africa tomorrow. We aspire to enable thousands of applications and solutions to be built on top of our platform and using our data. We want to enable Africa to transform the world by empowering our ecosystem through data and impacting 1B lives.
What is Amini’s timeline to launch?
We’ve already launched! And we’re turning a year old at COP28. If you are around and would like to know more about us and what we do, reach out here!