Amini, a Kenyan climate data startup, has announced winning USD 2 million in pre-seed funding. The Europe Climate Technology Fund, Pale Blue Dot, led the pre-seed funding rounds supporting Amini on a journey already set in motion for six months, where the company plans to launch a satellite constellation. The funding will expand Amini’s work, such as utilising public satellite data for smallholder farmers on the continent. Amini’s aggregation and analytics software taps into European Space Agency Sentinel and NASA Landsat data to deliver information on drought, flood, soil, and crop health. Other early-stage investors in the company’s pre-seed round include Superorganism, RaliCap, W3i, and Emurgo Kepple Ventures. Moreover, Amini has also become the first African company accepted onto the highly selective Seraphim Space Accelerator programme, which scouts from the top 2% of global early-stage space companies.
Amini was founded in December 2022 after the Founding CEO, Kate Kallot, realised that they had a solution to addressing the gap in African-specific environmental data during the United Nations’ latest climate change conference. Amini’s first customers are in the agricultural sector through 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 African farmers and global food chains.
While Africa accounts for more than 65% of arable land globally, data constraints ensure that the continent only accounts for 3% of the world’s GDP. The CEO of Amini attributes this to the effect of unreliable data on negatively affecting business decisions and market allocation.Â
Speaking on Amini, the CEO highlighted some positivity around the recognition that the company has been receiving, which demonstrates the value of their organisation and the impact it will have on the continent’s transformation over the coming years.
