Kukua

Kukua B.V is a Dutch company, which started as SODAQ B.V spin-off; a company specialized in the development of sensor solutions. Kukua uses innovative, robust and low-cost weather stations to analyse weather patterns in Africa. The company works together with various partners on both local and international levels. Since August 2015, the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture, their local team and local smallholder farmer contacts.

Within the agricultural sector, Kukua aims to collaborate with local telecom companies to spread the weather forecasts through SMS services. It is now possible, through the low-costs of Kukua’s weather stations, to make these aims scalable. In collaboration with local telecom companies, Kukua will share weather predictions through SMS and sell this data for a low price. For decades these farmers have used weather patterns, however, climate change has drastically changed these patterns.

The project students researched the willingness to pay and the market through both qualitative and quantitative research in Tanzania. The research was conducted in cooperation with the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture. Together, they accumulated as much data as possible and in turn use this data to sell these forecasts to sectors such as: agriculture, energy and aviation.