Away from Silicon Valley’s race to create futuristic AI, Nairobi-based startup Amini AI is focusing on practical AI solutions that address everyday challenges in emerging countries. With $6 million in funding and a team of 25, CEO Kate Kallot envisions Amini becoming “the operating system for the Global South,” providing foundational AI and data infrastructure for others to build upon.
Kallot highlights that emerging economies like those in Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia face unique data challenges: much of their information remains analogue, scattered, and unstructured. Amini’s mission is to help these countries transition from analogue to digital systems and prepare them for AI adoption.
Examples include reducing crop insurance costs in Africa through environmental monitoring and alerting Moroccan dairy producers to climate-threatened water sources. The startup is actively working with countries such as Ivory Coast, Barbados, India, Nepal, and Cambodia to develop data infrastructure.
Contrary to perceptions of emerging markets as mere consumers, Kallot notes their populations are digitally native, youthful, and tech-educated, yet lack opportunities to practice their skills locally. She stresses the need for regional innovation and investment in data centers, given that Africa hosts only 1% of global data center capacity and processes just 2% of its data locally.
While geopolitical tensions over AI chip technology have limited immediate impact, emerging nations are becoming strategic battlegrounds for infrastructure investment by tech giants like Huawei and Microsoft. Kallot advocates for collective efforts among emerging countries to build shared data infrastructure, warning that relying on foreign processing risks eroding local knowledge and culture.
Despite limited resources, emerging economies foster “frugal innovations” that are energy-efficient and sustainable. Kallot sees tremendous potential in these developers and emphasizes the importance of providing platforms to surface and scale their environmentally friendly solutions.
