In much of Africa’s agricultural and conservation economy, decisions are still made with incomplete or outdated information. Satellite images can miss small plots, mobile surveys are slow and costly, and on-ground verification often takes months. A Kenyan startup, Acre Insights, is betting that drones and locally designed digital tools can close that gap.
Founded by Catherine Njeri and Margaret Chepkirui, Acre Insights helps stakeholders monitor land, crops, trees and water using high-resolution drone imagery and lightweight analytics. The goal is to make land monitoring faster, more accurate and accessible for both smallholder farmers and large-scale projects.
Operating with a small, agile team of drone pilots, GIS analysts, interns and partners, the startup focuses on turning complex aerial data into clear, practical insights that farmers, aggregators and conservation organisations can actually use.
“These insights help farmers, aggregators, conservation organisations, and carbon projects assess land, track project progress and reduce the overall cost of monitoring and evaluation by using our digital plug-and-play solution,” Njeri said.
What you need to know
Acre Insights is entering a market already crowded with digital agriculture and climate-tech solutions. However, many existing tools rely heavily on satellite imagery or mobile data collection, approaches that often struggle in African farming contexts.
Smallholder farms are typically fragmented, irregularly shaped and intercropped, making them difficult to capture accurately from space. Tree counts are frequently underestimated, early signs of land degradation can be missed, and data collection cycles are often too slow to support timely decisions.
“We noticed a major gap in access to affordable high integrity monitoring, reporting and verification for carbon projects; and monitoring and evaluation solutions that take days not months,” Njeri explained.
According to her, these gaps have real consequences. Inaccurate data can affect farmer support programmes, undermine conservation outcomes and delay or reduce carbon payouts tied to verified land performance.
Acre Insights’ approach combines drone imagery with local context, designing its tools specifically for African farming realities. Rather than targeting only large estates, the company works through cooperatives and aggregators that already have trusted relationships with smallholder farmers.
Early traction across agriculture, forestry and carbon markets
Despite being barely two years old, Acre Insights has already delivered several high-impact projects. Its first major contract involved drone and satellite modelling to measure forest biomass across 30,000 smallholder farmers in coastal Kenya, a scale that would have been difficult and costly using traditional field methods.
The startup has also piloted drone-based maize seed inspection for the Kenya Plant Health Inspectorate, a project that marked a significant step in the digitisation of Kenya’s food inspection processes.
In parallel, the company has navigated one of the sector’s biggest hurdles: regulation. Acre Insights is fully licensed and compliant with Kenya Civil Aviation Authority requirements, including drone importation permits and pilot licensing.
These early wins have translated into growing commercial traction. Acre Insights is now signing recurring annual contracts, which Njeri describes as a major milestone in ensuring continuous digital monitoring of land and natural assets.
Interest is coming from agribusiness aggregators, commercial forestry and agroforestry projects, carbon developers and non-governmental organisations working with farmer networks.
Navigating regulation, trust and funding gaps
Operating at the intersection of drones, digital monitoring and climate markets has not been straightforward. Drone operations across Africa are tightly regulated, and for a young company, navigating the licensing and compliance process required time, patience and significant upfront investment.
Another challenge has been building credibility in carbon and sustainability markets that are still shaped largely by global institutions and standards.
Funding has also been constrained. Few investors focus specifically on drone-enabled monitoring or digital MRV infrastructure in Africa, forcing Acre Insights to grow lean and prioritise revenue early.
Acre Insights charges clients per acre or per project, a pricing model designed to work across different scales of operation. As its systems mature, the startup plans to expand regionally, working with partners in other African countries where monitoring smallholder landscapes remains a major challenge.
At a time when agriculture, climate finance and conservation increasingly depend on verified data, experts say the company’s work highlights a growing shift from assumptions and averages to evidence gathered directly from the ground.
Talking Points
At Techparley, we see Acre Insights as a practical response to one of Africa’s biggest blind spots in agriculture and climate work: the lack of accurate, affordable, ground-level data for smallholder landscapes.
By combining high-resolution drone imagery with locally designed digital tools, the startup addresses a core weakness in satellite-only monitoring systems, which often fail to capture fragmented farms, understory trees and early signs of land degradation.
This approach matters for farmers and carbon projects alike. Poor data can delay payouts, distort impact reporting and weaken trust in sustainability programmes. Acre Insights’ focus on speed and accuracy could help shift monitoring from a slow compliance exercise into a decision-making tool.
We are particularly interested in the company’s decision to work through cooperatives and aggregators rather than focusing only on large estates. That model aligns better with how African agriculture actually functions and improves the chances of smallholders being meaningfully included.
Regulatory compliance around drone operations remains a high barrier across Africa, but Acre Insights’ early investment in licensing and standards now positions it as a credible, long-term partner in a tightly regulated space.
As climate finance, carbon markets and digital agriculture continue to expand, we believe startups like Acre Insights will play a critical role in ensuring that Africa’s farms and forests are measured fairly, transparently and in ways that reflect on-the-ground realities.
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