This is the second article Briter is releasing to increase visibility on African AI Businesses as a part of the GIZ AI Made in Africa project. Briter has surveyed over 80 African businesses to better understand how African businesses adopt and develop artificial intelligence (AI) and navigate infrastructure constraints, gathering evidence to shape future policy. If you are an African business adopting or developing AI technology, we want to hear from you. Fill out the survey here .
Catherine Njeri founded Nairobi-based Acre Insights in 2019 to measure and monitor large-scale nature-based projects using satellite technology and drones. Today, artificial intelligence sits at the centre of its geospatial monitoring, helping the company turn raw visual data into insights.Acre Insights is one of the active players in Africa's Geographic Information Systems (GIS) space, operating alongside Kuza in Kenya and WeFly in the Ivory Coast, two startups similarly leveraging geospatial and mapping technologies for agriculture. Acre Insights currently sits at the intersection of climate and agriculture in Africa’s AI landscape, a sector that ranks as the second largest sector among the 291 AI businesses operating across the continent, according to Briter Intelligence .
The startup initially focused on using drones to estimate avocado farming production. However, predicting fruit yield beneath a canopy came with a 30% error margin, which was too high for commercial off-takers. The startup pivoted to a sector where the tree itself is the asset: large-scale nature-based projects, including carbon offsets and landscape restoration.
Flying a drone over a 100,000-acre project is practically impossible. The team maps a 5,000-acre sample and uses AI models to predict the biomass across the rest of the landscape. This requires calculating non-linear correlations between weather patterns, slopes, and varying satellite imagery, making AI fundamental to the company’s technical delivery.
"AI is an incredibly important tool for us because it can easily turn raw data into insights. In nature, for instance, different slopes and weather patterns do not have a linear correlation," Njeri explains. “So we had to build AI models to help us with these nonlinear relationships between tree growth and weather patterns.”
Navigating talent gaps, heavy data, and strict regulations
However, scaling an AI-native hardware company in Africa comes with a unique set of roadblocks. Finding highly specialised machine learning engineers in Kenya's market is difficult. “Our team is primarily Kenyan. We don't necessarily hire for AI or ML engineers. We hire young university graduates with backgrounds in GIS, data modelling or computer science who take ownership, have integrity, and are curious,” said Njeri. The founders, who spent four years building the initial tools themselves, train these new hires internally with a strong focus on prompt engineering to manipulate the models effectively.
Geospatial monitoring relies heavily on unstructured spatial data and imagery, making cloud infrastructure costs a significant financial burden. “We work with a lot of unstructured data such as images and spatial data, which are larger in size, and it's a big challenge because you never know when you’re going to need the data again,” Njeri notes. To manage this, Acre Insights regularly compresses and archives files to save space for new data. Field teams operating in remote agricultural areas with poor internet connectivity store data on physical solid-state drives (SSDs). This echoes MyItura's experience in Nigerian healthtech , where highly unstructured local data, steep cloud costs, and fierce salary competition present similar bottlenecks to scaling.
Regulation poses another challenge. The unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) market is heavily regulated in Kenya, and the high costs of import permits, operational licences, and insurance have hindered broader market uptake. Acre Insights responded by building a close relationship with the Kenya Civil Aviation Authority and actively participating in drafting the 2024–2025 UAV regulations. The team recommended specific flight zones that could bypass lengthy permit processes.
Expanding regional operations and funding the future of drone R&D
Despite these hurdles, the demand for digital monitoring in nature restoration is steadily growing. Acre Insights is expanding its operations into Rwanda and Tanzania in 2026, starting with pilot studies for bamboo monitoring projects. To succeed in these new markets, the company plans to replicate its strategy of building direct relationships with local aviation authorities to smooth market entry.
Looking ahead, Njeri argues that ecosystem support needs to change shape. Current development financing largely subsidises the restoration projects directly; she argues for additional financing explicitly targeted at startups and technical partners to fund R&D for monitoring systems. Njeri envisions decentralised drone technology transforming remote agriculture, making R&D infrastructure essential today to support the next generation of innovators.
