Good builders don’t just start with code. They start by asking who owns the foundation. What a thoughtful architect does for a city, Kate Kallot does for artificial intelligence (AI) in Africa and the Global South.
Counting data points is easy. Deciding who controls them—and who benefits from the intelligence built on top of them—is harder. As founder and CEO of Amini, Kate is building the data and AI infrastructure that allows countries long treated as raw-data exporters to become full participants in the AI economy. Her work reframes artificial intelligence not as something imported, but as something locally owned, trained, and governed.
In 2025, that vision earned her global recognition. Kallot received the TIME100 Impact Award in Abu Dhabi for creating a data ecosystem that empowers the Global South to shape its own AI future. On stages from Kigali’s inaugural Global AI Summit on Africa to the ITU’s AI for Good Global Summit in Geneva, she became one of the clearest voices arguing for “AI made in Africa”—not as a slogan, but as an operating principle.
Under her leadership, Amini expanded sovereign data systems that help African nations control and monetise their environmental data. The company deployed micro–data centers housed in shipping containers for the government of Barbados, signed an agreement with Côte d’Ivoire to build a local AI hub, and partnered with Aon and the African Development Bank to power data-driven agricultural insurance.
By mid-2025, Amini’s models were supporting more than 300,000 smallholder farmers across the Global South. At a moment when AI risks deepening global inequality, the world needs more leaders like Kate—builders who insist that intelligence, like infrastructure, must be owned by the people it serves.
