Kenyan start-up Amini has raised $2m in pre-seed funding for its AI and satellite technology platform, which aims to address Africa’s environmental data gap.
The six-month-old company gathers data from weather sensors and other sources and provides local and international companies with environmental information.
Amini’s founder, Kate Kallot, said the platform could provide granular data such as the amount of water and fertiliser used by farmers, as well as data on natural disasters, flooding and drought.
The company’s current customers include corporations working in the agricultural insurance and supply chain monitoring sectors.
The scarcity of high-quality environmental data in Africa has held back the continent’s development for decades by hampering business decisions and capital allocation, as well as making it difficult to measure the impact of climate change.
There are other instances of nothingness in accessing weather or geospatial data on the continent.
Amini has developed a data aggregation platform that pulls in different sources of data such as satellites to provide unified and processed data via APIs to local and international companies that need them.
Platforms like Amini bring much-needed data transparency for global organisations with vested interests in Africa, and helps them tackle supply chain issues at the last mile and provide agricultural insurance to farmers.
Amini’s business is such that it engages in a long sales cycle. International clients get access to the platform’s API after paying a flat license fee “in the multi-millions” for two years.
Local clients have tiered introductory pricing on a case-by-case basis, allowing them to access what they need and grow over time.
Heidi Lindvall, general partner at Pale Blue Dot, a European climate-focused venture capital firm that led the round, said: “The scarcity of high-quality environmental data in Africa is a concern as 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 and we believe they are best positioned to fill the environmental data gap of Africa.”
African climate tech start-ups have been experiencing a warming of venture capital activity since last year, despite the global VC funding cooldown.
Last year, the continent’s climate tech start-ups secured over $860m in equity funding.
Firms such as Novastar Ventures, Catalyst Fund and Equator are raising or have raised climate-tech funds for pre-seed to Series A start-ups.
Amini’s fundraising success is an important development for African start-ups as it shows that investors are willing to back innovative companies that tackle the continent’s unique problems.
The dearth of reliable data on environmental and other issues has long held back Africa’s development, and Amini’s platform could help to bridge the data gap.
As Africa is home to 65% of the world’s uncultivated fertile land and 30% of its mineral resources, there is huge potential for start-ups in the region to make a significant impact.
Source: Techcrunch
