Despite Africa possessing 65% of the world’s uncultivated fertile land and 30% of its mineral resources, the continent’s global GDP contribution remains at a mere 3%. This underperformance can be largely attributed to the persistent lack of reliable and trustworthy data, which has hindered Africa’s development for decades and impeded the measurement of climate change impact.
To tackle this challenge head-on, Kate Kallot, a seasoned leader with a track record of driving global innovation in AI and machine learning at Intel, Arm, and NVIDIA, established Amini Corp in late 2022 with the explicit purpose of addressing Africa’s data scarcity, facilitating capital investment, promoting climate resilience, and accelerating economic development opportunities across the region.
Fills environmental gap in Africa with AI and satellite tech
By leveraging advanced technologies and strategic initiatives, Amini Corp aims to unlock Africa’s untapped potential and usher in a new era of progress and prosperity and now the early-stage company has raised $2 million in pre-seed funding in an oversubscribed round led by Pale Blue Dot, a European climate tech fund that recently closed second fund at €93 million and has also invested startups including Improvin’ and HIVED. Other investors in Amini Corp include Superorganism, RaliCap, W3i, Emurgo Kepple Ventures and a network of angel investors from the global technology community.
The investment comes at a time when the company, initially focused on the insurance industry, is experiencing rapid expansion into supply chain monitoring, specifically at the last mile or the initial stages of the global supply chain.
Heidi Lindvall, General Partner, Pale Blue Dot, said: “The scarcity of high quality environmental data of Africa is a concern as it prevents others from building important climate solutions such as for example improving farmer insurance, monitoring climate risk or supply chains. When meeting the team behind Amini we were blown away by their ambition and expertise and we believe they are best positioned to fill the environmental data gap of Africa”
Kate Kallot, CEO and Founder of Amini, said: “We are building the single source of truth for environmental data across Africa. Data has the potential of transforming livelihoods by enabling everything from climate resilience to sustainable value chains. Should Amini reach its full potential and solve this problem, we are setting up Africa for tremendous transformation and development over the next decade. It’s a long way to get there but the early customer success and interest from global enterprises, governments and international organisations is showing us that we’re on the right track.”
Tackles challenges specific to Africa
Within the first six months of operation, Amini Corp has developed a robust data aggregation and analytics platform capable of collecting, unifying, and processing satellite data, weather data, and other types of data down to a square meter. The platform provides 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 and measure the impact of natural disasters across the region.
Amini has found its first customers in the agricultural insurance sector, using the platform’s granular, verifiable, and actionable data for enhancing farmers’ resilience through parametric agricultural insurance coverage. With a focus on regenerative agriculture, this collaboration aims to support both African farmers and global food chains.
