Taita Ngetich
Kenyan agri-tech futurist Taita Ngetich is coaxing bumper harvests from the country’s changing climate one sensor at a time. As an undergraduate he hacked together Illuminum Greenhouses solar-powered tunnels rigged with low-cost temperature and moisture probes that let smallholders adjust irrigation by text message. The prototype cut water use by 60 percent, drew orders from across East Africa, and seeded his next venture: Synnefa. Now chief executive, Ngetich is rolling out “smart blocks,” modular greenhouses bundled with precision-farming software, pay-as-you-grow financing, and an AI engine that advises farmers on fertigation in real time.
Backed by grants from the MIT Solve Grand Challenge (2023) and field capital from the Rainer Arnhold Fellowship, Synnefa has doubled yields on tomatoes and capsicums while cushioning growers against erratic rainfall. Ngetich, an MBA graduate of Warwick Business School and a Mandela Washington Fellow, campaigns for climate-resilient value chains at forums from Kigali to Cupertino and mentors Kenyan ag-engineering students through virtual build-a-bot camps. With a cloud platform that already processes two million data points daily and a plan to franchise assembly hubs in Rwanda and Tanzania by 2026, he aims to prove that smallholders, not mega estates, will write Africa’s next chapter in food security.