Nairobi-based agritech startup, Dairy Sense, is introducing intelligent, portable milk quality testing to the smallholder dairy farming in Africa.
Founded in May 2024 by engineer and entrepreneur Daniel Litunya, Dairy Sense has built a handheld device that combines smart sensors, portable hardware, and AI-driven analytics to test raw milk instantly at the point of collection.
The system delivers clear quality and safety results within 30 seconds, helping farmers, cooperatives, and buyers make faster, fairer decisions while protecting consumers.
“This enables farmers, cooperatives, and buyers to make swift, fair decisions, minimise losses, and safeguard consumers,” Litunya told Disrupt Africa.
Solving a Costly Problem in Africa’s Dairy Sector
Across Kenya and much of East Africa, dairy farming is dominated by smallholders who rely on informal or semi-formal supply chains. Milk rejection and pricing disputes are common, often because buyers cannot easily verify quality at the farm gate.
Millions of farmers operate without access to affordable, on-site testing tools. Most existing solutions are laboratory-based or imported industrial equipment, expensive, slow, and impractical for daily use in rural settings.
“Millions of smallholder dairy farmers operate without reliable, on-site milk quality testing. Existing solutions are largely lab-based or imported, making them expensive, slow, and impractical for everyday use,” said Litunya.
How Dairy Sense’s Technology Works
Dairy Sense’s device uses a combination of smart sensors and machine-learning models to detect spoilage, contamination, and other abnormalities in raw milk.
The system is portable, rugged, fast, affordable for emerging markets, and easy enough to use at rural collection points without technical expertise.
The company is fully bootstrapped and has already built a market-ready device. Its official launch is planned for next month through cooperatives, initially targeting 2,500 farmers.
Early users report faster acceptance decisions, fewer disputes, and improved pricing transparency.
Scaling Across Kenya and East Africa
Dairy Sense plans to expand nationally before entering neighbouring East African markets with similar dairy structures, working through cooperatives, processors, NGOs, and development programmes.
By moving quality testing to the farm gate, Dairy Sense could reduce waste, improve trust, raise farmer incomes, and strengthen food safety standards across the region.
For cooperatives and milk aggregators, Dairy Sense’s technology introduces a consistent and scalable quality control mechanism at the point of collection. Instead of relying on subjective assessments or delayed laboratory results, they can make faster, data-backed decisions that improve operational efficiency and reduce waste.
This also makes it easier to enforce quality standards fairly across large networks of farmers, which is essential for building reliable supply chains and meeting the requirements of processors and regulators.
What This Means for Diary Sense
Smallholder farmers say Dairy Sense could significantly reduce the uncertainty and income losses that come with milk rejection and pricing disputes.
Instant, on-site testing gives farmers clearer visibility into the quality of their produce before it changes hands, helping them understand why milk is accepted or rejected and what standards they are being measured against.
Over time, this transparency can strengthen trust between farmers, cooperatives, and buyers, and reduce the friction that currently characterises much of the informal dairy trade.
For consumers and public health systems, wider adoption of rapid milk testing could improve food safety outcomes. Early detection of spoilage or contamination reduces the risk of unsafe milk entering the market, particularly in regions where cold-chain infrastructure is limited.
At a broader level, analysts say the startup reflects a shift in how digital tools are being applied in African agriculture, away from abstract platforms and towards practical, field-level infrastructure.
Talking Points
It is impressive that Dairy Sense has designed a portable, AI-powered milk testing device that delivers quality results in under 30 seconds, directly at the point of collection.
This single capability alone positions Dairy Sense as a practical solution to long-standing problems such as milk rejection, pricing disputes, and mistrust between farmers and buyers, especially in rural and semi-formal markets where laboratory testing is inaccessible or too slow.
At Techparley, we see tools like this as critical infrastructure for modernising traditional sectors, not by replacing them, but by strengthening the everyday transactions that underpin livelihoods, food security, and local economies.
By embedding intelligence into a simple field-ready device, Dairy Sense effectively brings quality control to the farm gate, allowing cooperatives and aggregators to operate with greater consistency, transparency, and efficiency.
As the company scales, partnerships with cooperatives, processors, NGOs, and development programmes could play a critical role in accelerating deployment and building trust at the grassroots level.
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