TED Talks Daily Sunday Pick: Tech Solutions (#1): The affordable tech that will revolutionize farming (with Samir Ibrahim and Josephine Waweru)
6 snips
Nov 9, 2025 
Samir Ibrahim, CEO of SunCulture, revolutionizes farming with affordable solar irrigation systems for sub-Saharan Africa. He shares his insights on farmer-centered design and how his innovations dramatically cut costs, transforming lives. Josephine Waweru, a coffee farmer from Kenya, discusses how adopting SunCulture’s pump increased her farm's production and income. She offers invaluable advice to young people about the opportunities within agriculture and emphasizes the importance of skills and resilience for future generations.
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Build Around Farmer Needs
- SunCulture centers farmers by repeatedly asking them what they need and building services around those answers.
- That customer-first approach expanded the business from pumps to financing, agronomy, insurance, and inputs.
Drive Affordability With Tech And Business Models
- SunCulture cut system costs from about $5,000 to roughly $400 through engineering and business-model changes.
- They combined financing and carbon-credit revenues to drastically lower prices for smallholder farmers.
Fit Solutions To Investor Mandates
- Solar irrigation intersects many priorities: jobs, emissions, national security, and migration.
- The challenge is packaging the work so it fits different investors' mandates at different times.