Karen Cherono is the Co-Founder and CEO of AgroMind AI, an agritech company using technology and artificial intelligence to help smallholder farmers make better decisions and build more resilient livelihoods.

Her journey with AgroMind AI started from a very personal experience. In 2021, while in her home area of Bomet County, Karen witnessed farmers lose entire maize harvests to Maize Lethal Necrosis Disease. What struck her most was that many farmers did not have access to the right information at the right time. Some even replanted maize on infected land the following season, unknowingly exposing themselves to the same losses.

Coming from an ICT background, Karen began thinking about how technology could help close this information gap. This became the motivation behind AgroMind AI — a platform designed to put practical agricultural advice directly in the hands of farmers through their phones.

Today, AgroMind AI supports farmers across different stages of the farming journey, from planting and crop management to identifying pests and diseases, managing climate-related challenges, handling produce after harvest and finding useful market information.

Karen’s ambition goes beyond building a technology platform. She wants to see African farmers, particularly women and young people, have better access to knowledge, finance, markets and opportunities. Her vision is to reach 1 million farmers across East Africa, train 10,000 women as agri-entrepreneurs and Village Champions, establish 500 Village Bank-in-a-Box nodes, and expand school gardens to 500 schools.

At the heart of Karen’s work is a simple belief: farmers should not have to lose everything simply because they did not have the right information at the right time.

Through AgroMind AI, she is working to make agricultural knowledge more accessible, practical and relevant — while combining technology with local knowledge and climate-smart farming to create a stronger and more sustainable future for farming communities.