How two high school sweethearts built an AI company for farmers

Before Joseph Simukoko introduced me to Mwiche Mukoma, we had already spent nearly half an hour talking at Nairobi Street Kitchen. The conversation wandered from Zambian politics to African immigration, from why the continent still struggles to trade with itself to the industries that could define its economic future. 

Simukoko speaks the way some people sprint—leaning forward, tugging at his dreadlocks as ideas arrive faster than sentences can contain them. His optimism is infectious. Not naïve optimism, but the conviction of someone who genuinely believes Africa’s future can be engineered.

Where Simukoko is animated, Mukoma is measured. Soft-spoken and deliberate, the former banker weighs every word before letting it leave her mouth. While Simukoko fills the room with energy, she steadies it. Together, they feel like complementary halves of the same ambition.

Their story started in high school, where they first met as teenagers before eventually becoming husband and wife. In 2022, after careers in banking and agricultural development, they founded Green Giraffe, a Zambian startup using AI and satellite technology to help smallholder farmers access premium markets. 

Ironically, the company only exists because an export deal collapsed after they failed to prove compliance with European food standards, a setback that forced them to build the technology themselves.

We continued our conversation in the lobby of the Somerset Westview Hotel in Nairobi’s Kilimani neighbourhood. They spoke about colonial trade patterns, the absurdity of African countries finding it easier to trade with Europe than with one another, why entrepreneurship can outlast development aid, and the lessons they have learnt from farmers, investors, rejection, and each other.

This interview has been edited for…