Start-up aims to be 'operating system for Global South'

AWAY from the heady rush to build ultra-capable, sci-fi style artificial intelligence (AI) in Silicon Valley, ambitious Nairobi-based start-up Amini Al is betting on the technology addressing emerging countries’ prosaic problems in the here and now.

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Chief executive Kate Kallot aims for Amini — still a relatively small firm with $6million (R107.7m) in funding and 25 employees - to become “the operating system for the Global South” in the coming years, creating the infrastructure foundation for others to build AI and data processing applications.

“There is a huge opportunity for emerging economies to focus on more applied AI innovation rather than fundamental research, which is what a lot of the US and Europe is doing,” Kallot said at the Vivatech trade fair in Paris.

On its website, the company highlights uses of its platform such as slashing crop insurance costs for farmers across Africa by monitoring conditions, or warning dairy producers in Morocco of water sources at risk from climate change.

Such efforts are only a hint of what will become possible as more data is collected, organised and processed from across the emerging world, Kallot believes.