Amini Wants to Solve Data Scarcity in the Global South

Farming in Africa and most of the global south is dominated by subsistence, smallholder farmers cultivating less than two hectares of land. These farmers lack access to reliable weather forecasts and market information, and are highly vulnerable to weather hazards, climate change, and supply chain volatility.

Poor documentation and information management are at the root of Africa’s data scarcity problem. Most smallholder farmers do not keep farm records, and collecting existing data from private satellite companies or government institutions is difficult and expensive.

Amini is a data infrastructure startup in Nairobi, Kenya, that aims to tackle environmental data scarcity in the Global South.

Amini’s platform aggregates and transforms satellite imagery, weather data, and other complex raw data into actionable insights for farmers and stakeholders in the agricultural value chain. This information is accessible via an API and USSD/SMS for smallholder farmers with simple mobile phones. The company has also developed a foundation model for earth science, AnimiFM, trained and calibrated on satellite and environmental data across Africa.

It has partnered with the global services firm, Aon, and the African Development Bank (AfDB) to make crop insurance more accessible to African farmers, and is targeting global food and beverage companies, specifically at the last mile of the supply chain. The relatively small team says it is reaching 1.2 million customers through direct users and last-mile delivery partners.

Amini’s quest is to empower smarter decision-making in agriculture, natural resource management, and climate resilience.

Amini CEO and founder, Kate Kallot, was born and raised in France, but her family hails from the Central African Republic. After a nine-year career of senior leadership and management roles in leading tech companies, she decided to start a venture of her own with Amini.

In an interview with Zach Shelby, Kallot says her grandfather, Joseph Kallot, is a big inspiration to her. He returned to his country to serve in the police force after studying in the United States and working with Interpol.

She says his path is her model as she takes what she has learnt across multiple tech fields overseas to contribute to Africa’s advancement. Amini reflects her journey across the tech industry and merges all she has learnt in product management, edge artificial intelligence, and developer relations.

Talking to TIME, Kallot says, “Data is the start of any economic revolution,” and Amini is purely a platform play. The goal is to empower developers to “create even more innovative solutions for their communities.”

Amini presents an alternative to the global-first approach to satellite imagery and geospatial data used by Planet Labs and other companies. Kallot told Via Satellite, “It’s important to work with local populations to understand the different topologies and grasp how small African farmers in small holdings are growing crops…We are inverting the model. We are not building technology, and then applying it to Africa; we are building technology that is designed specifically for Africa.”

The AI divide is an offshoot of the digital divide concept, representing the socioeconomic inequality between nations with unfettered access to artificial intelligence technologies and those without. The AI divide has left developing countries at a severe disadvantage in the global economy.

Amini is part of a movement to bring the AI revolution, specifically the core philosophies of machine learning, to Africa and the Global South. The company has been able to leverage its ties to Silicon Valley to source funding and computing power. Its mini data centers, built in collaboration with HP and NVIDIA, have enabled the company to stay lean and retain developer talent.

Amini wants to be the backbone of all data collection, processing, and distribution in the Global South within ten years. Talking on the Changing Africa podcast, Kallot mentions some of the company’s challenges, including taxes, regulatory stability, and the inherent difficulty of scaling to multiple countries. Compute is also expensive to procure, and the company says it will need much more for the next phase.

Building digital infrastructure for the Global South is an arduous task, but the team at Amini is motivated to succeed.

We have previously covered Amini Lite, a streamlined version of the company’s core platform. You can find more information on the company’s website.