Innovative, modern solutions for efficient farmers
About Synnefa
Our mission is to eliminate risks and improve incomes for 1,000,000 farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Our vision is to see a world where African smallholder farmers generate a legacy of thriving farms for future generations.
Synnefa, a Greek word for 'cloud', is crucial for both farmers who need clouds for rain and technology developers who rely on Cloud infrastructure for their applications.
If you are an investor or funder looking to back us, hear directly from our Founder and CEO by visiting our new investor relations page here.
Our agricultural philosophy
Farmers face compounding challenges of climate change, decreasing land sizes, soil erosion, inadequate supply chains, unpredictable markets and poor access to capital which trap them in poverty.
They simply lack control!
To solve for all these challenges is hard! There is no shortcut or silver bullet that will solve for all these challenges farmers face today. We believe that a multi approach to the challenges farmers face is what it will take to move the dot and create the impact we want to see. Once we see this impact, we need to take it to scale.
Our Theory of Change is that if we build cheap and affordable climate smart farming tools for farmers, then they will grow high value crops year-round while using fewer resources, and their incomes will improve.
Our strategy to reach scale is focusing on making our products and services good enough, simple enough to be used and cheap enough for a market size that is big enough. We call it the 4 enoughs for scale.
Working together with farmers
Our company slogan is making complex farming feel simple! because that’s what we do every day. We push ourselves to create solutions that will make complex farming feel simple.
Growing food deserves to be easy when using modern farming solutions.We do this by partnering with farmers to provide them with affordable modern farming solutions to increase efficiency and improve production. We want farmers to do what they love most-farming! and leave all the heavy lifting to us!
The Synnefa journey started with a dream
Jan 2013
We hatched! Founded by 2 broke friends on campus.
Jan 2014
Incorporated and began building with Arduino boards in the hostels.
August 2014
The first prototype built and deployed at the foot of Mt.Kilimanjaro. Crushed within 7 days!
Dec 2015
Hired our first employee and reached 100 farms.
Feb 2015
Used Raspberry pi and worked amazing signed up 50 pre-orders.
November 2014
iHub loves our work! offers us office space and incubation. Finally moved out of our hostels! Yeeiii.
June 2016
President Obama comes to Kenya and loves our pitch, invites us to the US and offers us partnership and our first funding $15000 from AAAS
Jan 2017
V3 comes out better and smarter with solar power, everything we ever wanted. hired our employee #10
March 2018
Rapid testing and reiterations of V3. then backed by USADF, ASME SPRING $110 000 for further development
Oct 2023
Got backed by Livelihood Impact Fund, Mulago Foundation, Google, GSMA Foundation and MIT Solve. Reached 17,000 farmers in Africa
Sept 2021
We secured our pre-seed round lead by 54 Collective and Water and Energy for Food. Rebranded from Illuminum Greenhouses to Synnefa.
Jan 2020
Innovate UK joins our mission and funds us with $856,000 to build Smart Greenhouses for Africa powered by FarmShield™ v4.0. Our first angel investor says yes to back us
Dec 2024
Released FarmCloud™ 2.0 BETA and grew users to 3,000 farmers across 13 African countries. Expanded FarmShield™ to smart solar dryers funded by Efficiency for Access. Reached 21,000 farmers.
Listen to our CEO pitch Synnefa to funders and partners at MIT
Meet the Synnefa Team
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