uif.kilimora.africa
The Challenge AgriKonnekt Impact & SDGs Policy & Roadmap Open Source Contact uif.kilimora.africa
Expression of Interest · UNICEF Innovation Fund

Climate‑resilient infrastructure for the farmers who feed Kenya and the children who depend on them.

AgriKonnekt is Kilimora's open-source, AI-enabled agribusiness platform — climate intelligence, verified farmer identity, market access and sustainability tracking in one interoperable system, built for underserved farming communities across East Africa.

75%+of Kenya's food production comes from smallholder farmers largely excluded from finance and markets
30%+post-harvest losses in key value chains, driven by weak logistics, storage and market data
1interoperable system replacing fragmented tools for weather, financing, extension and market access
BSD·CERN·CC-BYfully open-source under OSI-listed licenses — software, hardware and content
This Expression of Interest is published at uif.kilimora.africa — UIF for "UNICEF Innovation Fund," on the kilimora.africa domain
The Problem

Farming communities are invisible to the systems meant to protect them

Kenyan smallholder farmers face compounding climate shocks — drought, irregular rainfall, livestock disease and soil degradation — while remaining locked out of reliable markets, climate financing and agricultural intelligence.

Weather, logistics, financing, extension services and market access all run on separate, disconnected tools. Without shared, verifiable data, rural producers stay invisible to insurers, buyers and sustainability programmes — and young people and women farmers are hit hardest, with the least access to financing, productivity tools and formal market networks.

"When a farmer can't be verified, they can't be financed, insured, or paid fairly — and their household absorbs that risk first, through their children."

Kilimora built AgriKonnekt to close this infrastructure gap: one climate-resilient, interoperable coordination system for underserved farming communities.

Rural household in Kenya Children in a farming community
The Solution

AgriKonnekt: one platform, four interlocking systems

An AI-enabled agribusiness infrastructure platform combining climate intelligence, digital farmer verification, market coordination and sustainability tracking — delivered through low-bandwidth dashboards and SMS built for rural connectivity.

01 · Sense

Climate Intelligence

IoT sensors, satellite data and drone-supported diagnostics track crop health, soil conditions, livestock risk and weather exposure in real time.

02 · Verify

Digital Farmer Identity

Verified digital production identities for farmers and cooperatives enable traceability, buyer trust, and access to climate finance and insurance.

03 · Connect

Market Coordination

Producers connect directly to aggregators and institutional buyers, with logistics optimised to cut post-harvest losses and market inefficiencies.

04 · Track

Sustainability Data

Publicly exposed, real-time impact data — income, resilience and emissions proxies — measurable by funders, insurers and policymakers alike.

Community building technology tools together
Impact & Alignment

12-month target outcomes for households and children

Indicative milestones AgriKonnekt is designed to move over the first 12 months of Innovation Fund support — to be tracked against verified, publicly exposed platform data as required by the Fund.

Projected 12-Month Improvement

Reduction in post-harvest loss−40%
Verified farmers with finance/insurance access+50%
Household income stability+35%
Women- and youth-led households reached+45%
Reduced child involvement in harvest-stress labour+25%

Targets to be finalised against baseline pilot data and updated quarterly on uif.kilimora.africa once fieldwork begins.

Every gain above compounds into what children in these households need to develop: stable nutrition, uninterrupted schooling, and a home that isn't one drought away from crisis. Stronger farmer incomes are the most direct path UNICEF has into rural child wellbeing in these communities.

AgriKonnekt's public, real-time data layer means this isn't a one-off survey — it's a living measurement system UNICEF and partners can query continuously.

Sustainable Development Goals

Directly advancing eight SDGs

1No Poverty
2Zero Hunger
3Good Health
5Gender Equality
8Decent Work
9Industry & Innovation
13Climate Action
17Partnerships
Systems Change & Policy Alignment

Built to plug into the continent's own agriculture and development agenda

AgriKonnekt is designed as public infrastructure, not a standalone product — aligned with the frameworks East Africa and the African Union have already committed to.

AU Agenda 2063

Aspirations 1 (inclusive growth & agricultural transformation) and 6 (people-driven development, gender equity, children & youth) — AgriKonnekt's verification layer gives both a measurable data backbone.

Malabo Declaration & CAADP

Supports the continental commitment to end hunger and halve post-harvest losses by building the traceability and market-linkage infrastructure CAADP targets assume exists.

Kenya Vision 2030 & ASTGS

Directly supports the Agricultural Sector Transformation and Growth Strategy's push for climate-smart, technology-enabled, market-linked farming under the Bottom-Up Economic Transformation Agenda.

EAC Vision 2050

Contributes to regional food security and agro-industrialisation goals by building interoperable data infrastructure that can scale across East African Community member states.

12-month roadmap

Q1

Verification & baseline

Onboard priority cooperatives, issue digital farmer identities, capture baseline household and climate-risk data across target counties.

Q2

Climate intelligence live

Deploy IoT/satellite monitoring and SMS advisory across pilot sites; open the real-time public data feed for external review.

Q3

Market & finance linkage

Connect verified farmers to aggregators, buyers and finance/insurance partners; publish first quarterly impact update on uif.kilimora.africa.

Q4

Scale & open-source release

Publish full BSD/CERN/CC-BY-licensed release, document lessons for replication, and prepare a scale-up plan across additional counties and, eventually, EAC states.

Who We Reach

Prioritising low-income and women-led households

Targeting is deliberate: the households least visible to formal systems are the ones most exposed to climate shocks — and where children carry the most risk when a harvest fails.

Children from a farming household
PriorityLow-income smallholder households in high climate-exposure counties
PriorityWomen-led households, given lower access to land, finance and productivity tools
PriorityYouth-led farming enterprises building first-time formal market access
PriorityCooperative-linked households needing verified digital identity for credit
Open Source Commitment

Fully open, fully verifiable — no gatekeeping on public-good infrastructure

AgriKonnekt is released as open-source technology under OSI-listed licenses, in line with the Innovation Fund's eligibility requirements, with an existing prototype and pilot results already in progress.

OSI-Approved LicensingSee full license list at opensource.org/licenses

This initiative is managed by Kilimora, which retains automatic copyright in the underlying code the moment it is written — no registration is required under the Kenya Copyright Act. The licenses below are Kilimora's explicit grant of permission for open, public reuse.

SoftwareBSD 3-Clause License (open-source, OSI-approved) — full text included in the project's LICENSE file.
HardwareCERN Open Hardware Licence (CERN‑OHL) for IoT sensor and diagnostic device designs.
Design & contentCreative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC‑BY 4.0) for documentation, design assets and written content.

Why this qualifies

✓ Registered private company

Kilimora is registered as a private company in Kenya, a UNICEF programme country.

✓ Existing working prototype

AgriKonnekt is live as a working platform, with initial pilots underway across target counties.

✓ Open by default

Every layer — code, hardware designs and content — ships under an OSI-equivalent or CC-BY license.

✓ Public, measurable data

Real-time impact data is publicly exposed and independently verifiable, not self-reported only.

Get In Touch

Let's talk about the Innovation Fund partnership

For clarifications on this Expression of Interest, pilot data, or a walkthrough of the live AgriKonnekt platform.

Call / WhatsApp+254 103 900 367
Live Applicationuif.kilimora.africa

Kilimora is the managing entity behind AgriKonnekt and this Expression of Interest. All supporting evidence — pilot data, the open-source repository, and the 2-minute pitch video — is linked from the live microsite above.

Email the Team