The founder tackling Africa’s data scarcity problem
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 23 April 2026
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We meet Kate Kallot, the founder and CEO of Amini AI, a startup working to make farming and environmental data easier to obtain across Africa and other emerging economies. The entrepreneur set up the company with the aim of improving access to reliable information, shaped in part by her family’s experience fleeing the Central African Republic after her grandfather, an Interpol agent, was assassinated.
If you'd like to get in touch with the team, our email address is businessdaily@bbc.co.uk
Presenter: Leanna Byrne Producers: Victoriya Holland and Niamh McDermott
Business Daily is the home of in-depth audio journalism devoted to the world of money and work. From small startup stories to big corporate takeovers, global economic shifts to trends in technology, we look at the key figures, ideas and events shaping business.
Each episode is a 17-minute, daily deep dive into a single topic, featuring expert analysis and the people at the heart of the story.
Recent episodes explore the weight-loss drug revolution, the growth in AI, the cost of living, the economic impact of the war in the Middle East, and why bond markets are so powerful.
We also feature in-depth interviews with company founders and some of the world's most prominent CEOs. These include Google's Sundar Pichai, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, and the CEO of Canva, Melanie Perkins.
(Picture: Kate Kallot. Credit: Kevin Allen/Devex)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:07.0 | Hello, I'm Leanna Byrne and welcome to meet the founders from Business Daily on the BBC World Service. |
| 0:13.1 | This is where we speak to innovators around the world about the ideas, risks and realities of starting a business. |
| 0:20.3 | Today, the founder of an African AI startup |
| 0:22.6 | working to make farming and environmental data |
| 0:25.4 | easier to obtain across the continent |
| 0:27.9 | and other emerging economies. |
| 0:30.2 | We've now proven that you can build a company |
| 0:33.7 | that does impactful work, |
| 0:35.9 | but that can also make profit out of it. |
| 0:38.4 | That's Kate Callet, my guest today. |
| 0:43.7 | So hello, welcome to meet the founders, Kate. |
| 0:46.1 | Thank you so much for joining me today to just begin, just introduce yourself for us and |
| 0:50.3 | tell us what Amini does. |
| 0:52.7 | Thank you so much. |
| 0:53.6 | So I'm the founder and CEO of Amini, |
| 0:56.0 | and we are an AI company building the sovereign data infrastructure for the global |
| 1:00.9 | south. |
| 1:01.6 | Started a couple of years ago with Africa, but have now expanded throughout the global |
| 1:07.3 | south, doing a lot of work in Latin America, Caribbean, and Southeast Asia. |
| 1:11.6 | A little bit of the backstory. My grandfather, Joseph, was born under French colonial rule |
| 1:17.4 | in the Central African Republic. He was one of the first African graduate of Saint-Sier, |
... |
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