Happy Sunday, TED Talks Daily listeners.
I'm Elise Hu.
Today we have an episode of another podcast from the TED Audio Collective, handpicked by us for you.
TED Tech's host, Cheryl Dorsey, went to Kenya back in June to record a mini-series with TED Countdown Summit 2025 speakers about how technology can help to generate a greener and more equitable future.
In today's kickoff episode, we start with a simple question.
What do farmers in Kenya actually need?
Sherelle spoke with Samir Ibrahim, the CEO of Sun Culture, a company that's replacing diesel and petrol-powered water pumps with more affordable solar-powered ones to give farmers reliable access to water to irrigate their farms year-round.
We'll also hear from coffee farmer Josephine Wawiru, who joined Sherelle to discuss how the pump revolutionized her farm and what advice she has for young people.
TED Tech is a show that features talks and conversations that explore the many ways in which technology impacts society.
If you want to hear more insights like this, listen to TED Tech wherever you get your shows.
Learn more about the TED Audio Collective at audiocollective.ted.com.
Now on to the episode.
Welcome to TED Tech, a podcast from TED.
I'm your host, Sherelle Dorsey.
Today we're kicking off a special mini-series about climate solutions and the technology that can lead us into a greener, more equitable future.
The climate crisis feels more urgent than ever, and I'm not the only person saying that.
Many in the international climate community define this time we're living in as the deciding decade, our last chance to get it right for the future of our planet and humanity.
As we consider possible pathways forward, I often ask myself what bold ideas about climate can give us hope.
What conversations aren't we having that we should?
And where have we limited our thinking about what's possible for our planet and our future?
I went to this year's Countdown Climate Summit in Nairobi Kenya, looking for answers to some of those questions.
And my time at Countdown was an adventure in discovering what's possible.
I spoke with some of the world's leading minds who are actively shaping climate change solutions.
The visionaries and doers confronting one of the greatest challenges of our time.
And over the course of this four-part series, we're bringing those conversations to you.
Today, you'll hear from two of these climate change makers.
First, we'll speak with Samir Ibrahim. a CEO of a company called Sun Culture.
In the last decade, Sun Culture has brought solar-powered water pump technology to rural farmers in Kenya and across sub-Saharan Africa.
Today, they serve over 60,000 farmers.
And later on the show, we'll hear directly from one of them.
But first, a break to hear from our sponsors.
Samir, you did not have to start this kind of company.
No.
At all.
Let's just start there.
I had to.
Okay.
I think.
Take me all the way back to why you're in your early 20s, right?
Yeah.
And we're thinking of all the like social media networks that have emerged and all of this cool like Silicon Valley startup food delivery kind of world.
And you're like, actually, I'm going to build solar pumps for farmers 8,000 miles away.
So talk to me about how this even came together.
And you've been working on this for a little over a decade now.
Yeah.
Right?
It all goes back to family, for sure.
So my family is from East Africa.
And I'm first generation non-East African.
So I was born in Canada, grew up in the U.S. and Florida.
When you grow up in an immigrant household, money is always a conversation.
Being told you have opportunities that your parents didn't have is always a conversation.
And I grew up in this community, in the Smiley Muslim community, and I did a lot of volunteer service.
So it was a lot of volunteering in my life.
So you kind of put all these three things together and you fast forward and you had me wanting to figure out how to do.
You know classic do well by doing good.
And I always knew I would do something in the region that my family came from, because I almost felt it was a responsibility to honor my ancestors for busting their ass to make sure that I could grow up in where I grew up.
And I felt a deep responsibility for that.
That then translated into like a broader responsibility for people that don't have opportunities that didn't have
So while I didn't have to start a company like that, especially in New York at a time when all these other companies were starting and there was a lot of opportunities to do other things, I also feel like I had to do this because I thought about it was who else would?
And it's a big problem that needs to be solved.
And I'm going to do my part to do that.
And so sun culture is solving a very major issue that I think most of us, especially if we grew up in the western part of the world or like we did right in the States access to water, access to ongoing electricity that's not something that we have to think about.
Yeah.
Right.
But there still are millions of people who don't have those basic necessities and it affects economic mobility and opportunity.
How did you think about the design of this, for it to work and to solve some of these major issues that we don't tend to think about?
The fundamental principle that has driven everything we do at the company has been putting the farmer at the center of everything that we do.
So we always say we build with our customers for our customers.
So we listen a lot.
We spent the first few years in the field.
And what we realized was farmers don't have access to the things that we have, access to that enable us to maximize value from the land that we have, for example, access to irrigation, access to financing, access to the installation and training and agronomy support required to figure out what to do, et cetera, et cetera.
So we didn't start with the idea of having a one-stop shop for smallholder farmers.
It literally came from asking farmers what problems they needed solved and then asking that question again and again, and again and again.
And we continue to do that.
We started offering things like health insurance recently.
We're starting to bundle other agriculture inputs like seeds and shovels, et cetera.
And it was an idea that we came up with.
I wish I could show you this really elaborate, beautiful model and framework that we use.
And I can say, you know, the inspiration came one night.
It really is as simple as just asking our customers, what do you need?
I imagine that the technology has also changed from the launch of Sun Culture to up until now?
How has it evolved over time?
What have you all learned?
When we started the business, the cheapest way to put solar-powered irrigation together for a one-acre farm was 25000.
Wow.
Our first pilot, we put it together for $5,000.
We said, okay, there's a world in which we figure out how to make that cheaper over time.
So let's not focus on the fact that it's still out of reach for the hundreds of millions of people in Africa who or the 2 billion people around the world who wake up every morning figuring out where water is.
But let's figure out how to build the business model you mentioned, or build the technology stack required to help farmers access this technology and then, over time, make it go cheaper and cheaper and cheaper.
So we started with $5,000.
Now our cheapest system is around $400.
And that came from a lot of engineering innovation, but also a lot of business model innovation.
So figuring out that we could finance our customers so they pay us in monthly installments.
Figure out that we can start a carbon business so we sell carbon credits and use those revenues to subsidize the cost of the system for the farmers.
It was really thinking about what are the other things we can bring in to make this more affordable for customers?
Because at the end of the day, smallholder farmers are super price sensitive.
And a little bit of a reduction in price goes a really, really long way.
Yeah.
You have...
Farmers as your customers, but I also imagine you are interfacing a lot with investors, of kind of all sorts policymakers, in having this conversation of how even climate is impacting particularly rural areas and farming as a whole because of a changing climate overall.
Are you seeing much more willingness to have deeper conversations on a changing climate and sort of what technologies are going to be needed there to kind of help mitigate and to ensure that people of the soil are able to grow the food that's needed to feed the world?
What does that kind of look like for you?
Yeah, when we started, man, it was such an uphill battle.
Everyone was like, wait, you're going to do what?
This has never happened anywhere in the world.
So that's a problem.
I was a young brown guy raising venture money in a nontraditional space, in a nontraditional market, as a 23 or 24 year old.
Everyone was like, there's absolutely no way this is going to happen.
And I can see why.
I think you probably would have been pretty crazy to invest in us in the early days.
I told our early investors recently, you guys are crazy.
But I'm glad you were because this ended up working out.
So there was a lot of deep education required over many years.
Now, there's less education required for this actually work.
It's kind of accepted that productive agriculture equipment and the combination of renewable energy and agriculture is like a thing.
Now, what's interesting and the big changes I've seen recently is how to fit what we do into a specific box that people care about.
Now there's so much money available for this, but everyone has their own mandates.
Some people care about jobs.
Some people care about reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.
In the current political environment, people care more about national security and migration.
And the thing with what we do is that it's really hard to put in a box because it touches so many important things.
Food and smallholder farmers are at the core of the global economy.
There are so many smallholder farmers that grow so much of the food that we eat, and they're the center point of a lot of political instability caused by forced migration.
So they touch all these buzzwords.
So what's really changed is figuring out how to make sure...
This complex ecosystem that we're building fits into a box that aligns with a particular investor at a particular time.
I think that's been the big change.
Yeah.
One of the conversations I was having with a few people here at the Countdown Summit was about these are not your typical Silicon Valley unicorn.
Like big exit in maybe 10 years.
There's a long, long game to play here.
And the capital has to be... friendly to that notion as well.
I think we need to show that you can make money by doing this.
The only way we're going to get more money into businesses like Sun Culture is to prove that we can help people make money.
Incentives rule the world.
And, for better or worse, the return that someone can get from making an investment is one of the biggest incentives that rules the world.
So I'm very much for saying we're a for-profit business.
We're going to make you a lot of money.
And this is why you should be investing in our business.
I'll give you an example of what we're doing right now that maybe helps answer this.
So We have a lot of smallholder farmers who are making a lot of money for the first time.
And just like you and I, when they make more money, they want to buy more stuff.
So they're coming to us and saying, hey, making money, can I get some more things?
So on one side, we have these smallholder farmers that no one thought was bankable.
We have really high industry-leading collection rates for our financing for them.
And they're saying, hey, we want more things.
So we have bankable customers here.
And on the other side, we have all these other companies who want to sell things to farmers.
So we're sort of becoming this marketplace, where on one side we have customers, on the other side we have vendors.
And I think that for us, we want that to scale across farmers all over the world.
So how do we be the center of the ecosystem for people to get access to high quality bankable farmers?
And how can we be the trusted partners for farmers all over the world?
Using physical infrastructure, so sales retail, after sales financing, and both physical and digital technology.
And It starts with smallholder farmers and solar irrigation.
It expands to other types of products and services.
And then eventually it expands to other types of farmer segments and other geographies.
So if I had it my way, I would never let this thing go, because I think there's no silver bullet in development, but I believe that it is solving some of the biggest problems that we face today.
And it has the opportunity to create generational wealth for my family and the families of people working with us.
And I think that's important because if we can create generational wealth for people working with us and we can create outstanding returns for our investors, we can prove that a business that has roots as an ag tech or climate tech or smallholder farm business in Africa can actually be one of the greatest businesses in the world.
You know, obviously you've learned a lot over the last few years of building out this technology and this company.
But what were some of the hurdles?
I think one The hurdles in general have been how do you continue to iterate when you're learning to do something for the first time?
And I know this is philosophical, but just bear with me for a second.
We were the first to do what we did, both from commercializing solar irrigation and adding financing and adding services and adding a carbon business and adding software, et cetera.
And because you're a company of first, there's nothing you can do to emulate someone else.
I think the hardest part is figuring out how to not look at what other people are doing in a world where media is all-consuming.
And you're just seeing success stories and failure stories and you're trying to navigate.
Do I listen?
Do I not listen?
And iterating?
So for example, how do we get solar irrigation down from $5,000 to $500?
A problem in itself.
So there's technology innovation, there's manufacturing innovation, there's operational innovation, there's financing innovation.
How do you continue to listen to your customers who are giving you feedback, as they're experiencing something for the first time?
And sometimes that feedback is conflicting because they're also learning at the same time.
So I think the hardest skill set to develop internally was being able to change our mind with the new data that we got in.
And I think it's less of a particular technology hurdle.
It's more of a cultural and behavioral hurdle that we have to keep reinforcing.
That helps us continue to innovate.
Otherwise, you get stuck.
And our customers, they're growing.
And if we don't continue to support them as we grow, we've failed, because we made a promise to them that we're going to be with them forever.
And they took the biggest bet of their lives on us.
They spent the most money they have ever spent before investing in us.
And if we leave them after a few growing seasons, we have failed.
That cultural mindset, I think, is the hardest thing to scale, especially as you grow in new countries and new people etc.
That was Samir Ibrahim, Sun Culture CEO and co-founder.
Coming up.
We're learning about Sun Culture's tech in practice from Josephine Waweru, a Kenyan farmer who has used the solar pump to quite literally change her life.
That's next after the break.
Welcome back, listeners.
We're now going to hear from one of the farmers using Sun Culture's solar pump technology Josephine Waweru.
She's a smallholder farmer from Sagana, Kenya, who first started out growing coffee.
Like millions of rural farmers across the globe, her greatest challenge was water.
Until a solar-powered pump from Sun Culture changed everything.
In September 2019, Josephine installed the solar water pump on her three-acre farm.
The pump works like this.
Using solar power, it pulls water from any water source, like the river Josephine gets hers from.
Then the water is pumped into a raised water storage tank during the day for later use.
The pump's solar panels provide all its electricity.
No batteries or inverters required.
Since installing SunCulture's technology on her farm, Josephine no longer relies on costly diesel pumps and long, exhausting trips to the river.
And she's able to avoid the challenges of unpredictable rainfall.
She's saved over 10000 Kenyan shillings a month, expanded into fish farming and added potatoes, capsicum and new coffee bushes to her crops.
These aren't just marginal gains.
They represent a shift from survival to growth.
So, Josephine, first of all, it's just such an honor to have you here.
I'm glad to be here, too.
How long have you been farming?
That minute I started seeing me as a farmer was...
It's a journey of four years.
So it is a four years growth.
What made you decide to start planting coffee?
When my son was working outside the country as a coffee barista, he would come home for holiday for a month.
And then when he comes home, it's just like his mother.
He can't rest.
Either he's in school or he's training.
When you want to become a good barista, you have to relate with coffee from tree to cup.
So you have to see how coffee grows.
And it got me thinking.
I was like okay, since this boy has become so passionate about coffee and that is the path he wants to take, let me do something for him.
So one day I called him and I said, why don't we do a few trees of coffee?
And it would be easier for you because you will train.
At the same time, everything is here.
You don't have to move out of the farm.
And he said, that is a great idea.
So we decided to plant the coffee.
So I did like a thousand trees.
Wow. in a partnership with him, and I struggled so much with water.
So what techniques were you using to grow your coffee before you started to use the solar pumps?
I used to hire diesel pumps.
It comes with a lot of cost and at times you end up not even getting to the harvest having a good harvest because at times you hire someone, they say they're coming and then they don't come.
And, you know, a plant needs water when it needs water.
And the diesel pumps were pumping...
Water from the local water supply?
From the river.
That river.
So I was getting the river all the way from the 400 meters from where my place is.
And that was a little bit tough.
So you said you've really been farming for about four years.
So at what point...
Did you start using the solar pumps?
The four years journey is with the solar powered pumps.
My coffee was truly drying.
I was at the point of losing the coffee and I had like capsicum on the farm.
I had cabbage and they all needed water.
I really cried so many times.
You are speaking to the plant.
I tell them, my babies, don't worry.
I will find something for you.
At times I carry two jars and start watering.
But how far can I go with that?
And I really needed a solution as soon as possible.
And then I got the solar pump and things really changed.
That's amazing.
So a very big difference between using the diesel pump and then now the solar pump.
And you've been using this now on your farm for a few years.
Are you seeing that farmers are willing to adopt the technology, especially since you've proven how well it works?
It is so fun. to be in my farm because every day there's a new idea growing.
It's working so well.
So we've added more coffee because we want to do coffee in large scale.
And then we also do maize.
Each farmer who comes to my farm and see how I'm enjoying water.
And I usually tell them, I just need the power of the sun and I'm good to go.
And it is a climate smart product.
They are like, where can I get this?
In the first two months after my pump I had like almost 20 people farmers who already adopted the same product.
And right now, I think I have over 50 farmers who are using the same product and they are loving it.
And it's become so easy because you don't have to think the accelerating prices of diesel every day.
I think one of the powerful things I took away from your talk was that Farming is business.
It's an opportunity.
And you've talked about expanding your coffee production maze.
And so you're seeing this as a numbers game in a really fascinating way.
When did you start to see that return on your investment and this risk that you took of this new technology?
When I could not even worry anymore about what I would serve on the table.
I have something in my pocket so I can decide what to project comes next.
So we always have a plan of the things we want to do, because we are building something and we think it's going to be big one day.
There at the farm.
It's all about finding something to fall back to.
We are so uncertain of what is going to happen to the world in the next years.
So you have to make sure there's something that if your child comes back home, there is always something they could fall back to.
Yeah.
What kind of conversations are you having with other farmers or even young people about this opportunity?
Young people need to know you can't stick with just one skill.
You learn as many skills as possible.
That is the only way you get to survive in this world because things are changing.
And I usually challenge them to look it into the soil way, because there is a lot of money in the soil.
You just have a lot of money in the soil.
Your 1,000 can grow into millions.
Your 10 shillings can grow into thousands.
As a final question to you, what gives you hope?
My hope lies in this generation and the generations to come.
And I pray to God I be around to see this change that is going to come through.
If we just sit down and do the right thing and make sure that we create something in our young generation that will go far, I'll be in a position to say that can be very possible.
And that is what I'm looking forward to.
Josephine, thank you so much for taking the time.
And congratulations on all of your successes and just all of the work that you're doing.
Thank you so much.
That's Josephine Waweru, farmer from Sagana, Kenya.
All right, that's our show.
Thanks for listening and thanks for checking out our special series.
Stay tuned.
We'll be back with more interviews from the Countdown Climate Summit in Nairobi Kenya, in the coming weeks.
In the meantime, you can keep this conversation going with us on our social media accounts, at TED and at TED Countdown on Instagram and X.
TED Tech is a podcast from TED.
This episode was produced by Lucy Little and Trina Menino.
Our editor is Alejandra Salazar, and the show is fact-checked by Jen Nam.
Special thanks to Constanza Gallardo, Daniela Barreso, Maria Ladias, Tanzika Sangmanivan and Roxanne Heilash.
If you're enjoying the show, make sure to subscribe and leave us a review so other people can find us too.
I'm Sherelle Dorsey.
Let's keep digging into the future.
Join me next week for more.
