TED Talks Daily How satellites are supporting farmers across Africa | Catherine Nakalembe
43 snips
Oct 24, 2025 
Catherine Nakalembe, a satellite food security specialist and TED Fellow, discusses using satellite imagery and machine learning to aid smallholder farmers in Africa. She reveals how her work helps predict floods and droughts, adapting technology to local needs. Catherine shares her innovative use of GoPros for collecting crop data and the challenges of transferring high-tech data to farmers on the ground. She emphasizes the importance of engaging local knowledge and building capacity to turn data into actionable insights, ensuring farmers can effectively respond to agricultural risks.
AI Snips
Chapters
Transcript
Episode notes
Satellites Offer Daily, Scalable Agricultural Data
- Over 8,000 satellites take daily images that can map crops, rainfall, floods and droughts at scale.
- Catherine Nakalembe says this data creates powerful, timely awareness for decision makers when tailored correctly.
Models Trained Elsewhere Misrepresent Small Farms
- Many existing satellite models are trained on large, homogeneous fields and fail in African smallholder contexts.
- Catherine Nakalembe warns that using those models without adaptation feeds decision-makers with inaccurate maps.
GoPros On Motorcycles: Ground Truthing At Scale
- Nakalembe's team used GoPros on motorcycles to photo-map Western Kenya and collected over five million images.
- They trained models to recognize specific crops like maize, beans and cassava from those ground pictures.