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 length and clarity.

If Green Giraffe never existed, what do you honestly think you’d be doing today?

Mukoma: My background is in finance, so I’d probably still be working in a bank, pushing paper and convincing myself I was helping people manage their money. But what we’ve built with Green Giraffe feels far more meaningful. In less than three years, we’ve changed how thousands of farmers interact with markets and food systems. I can look at myself in the mirror and say we built something that genuinely matters. I couldn’t say that after eight years in banking.

Simukoko: I’d still be doing something around smallholder farmers. I’ve worked with them since 2010, and my obsession has always been making markets work for them. That’s why we teamed up. Mwiche wanted to create markets through agro-processing, and together we evolved into solving the compliance barriers that keep African farmers out of premium markets. Green Giraffe is just the latest expression of a mission I’ve had for years.

Simukoko: We met at university about twenty years ago. She studied finance, and I studied agriculture.

Mukoma: As you grow older, you realise many African countries suffer from the same problems. Sometimes trade fails because of something as simple as missing documentation. We came to Kenya and saw products like mabuyu (a popular snack in East Africa made from babob tree seeds) that we also have in Zambia, and I kept asking myself, “Why don’t we trade more with each other?” You start seeing that producers lose money, consumers lose choices, and everyone pays the price for systems that don’t make sense. Eventually, you stop asking why and start trying to fix it.

People assume entrepreneurs were always ambitious children. What were you like?

Mukoma: A troublemaker. My parents always said I wasn’t difficult; I was frustrated by systems that made no sense. I questioned everything, broke rules, and always believed there had to be a better way.

Simukoko: She likes calling herself a troublemaker, but in high school, she became the first student trusted to run the school tuck shop. Nothing went missing. As for me, I was usually several pages ahead of the teacher. I’d be staring out the window, the teacher would assume I wasn’t paying attention, ask me a question, and I’d answer it in detail. Sometimes I’d even be asked to teach the class. I was difficult to teach because I was constantly curious.

Mukoma: One thing I appreciate about him is his humility. He always asks whether there’s a better solution. He’ll listen to everyone before making a decision.

You’ve built a business helping African farmers reach global markets. Why does Africa still export raw produce while importing products made from its own crops?

Mukoma: A lot of our thinking has been conditioned over generations. We’ve inherited systems that tell us what our role in the global economy should be.

Simukoko: Colonialism didn’t really end. It simply changed form. Kenya is famous for tea, but who decided tea should define Kenya? European countries are famous for chocolate without growing cocoa.

We’re still using transport systems designed to move raw materials out of Africa rather than connecting African markets. Even our language reflects it. We call countries “landlocked” instead of “land-linked.”

Why is exporting automatically assumed to mean Europe? Africa is becoming the world’s largest market. Why aren’t we asking how to sell to Ghana, Mauritania, or Kenya before thinking about Europe?

The African Continental Free Trade Area exists, yet Africans still struggle to travel across Africa. Sometimes it’s cheaper and easier to fly to Europe than to another African country. That mindset has to change.

Mukoma: If we traded more with each other, we’d stop exporting raw materials and start exchanging finished products that create wealth on the continent.

What belief did you hold at 25 that you now think was completely wrong?

Simukoko: I believed development aid was the answer.

Today, I think entrepreneurship creates a more sustainable impact. Aid eventually runs out; businesses keep solving problems because customers pay for solutions. When organisations like USAID pulled back, younger me would have panicked. Today I see an opportunity. Every challenge creates space for an entrepreneur to build something useful.

Mukoma: Mine was believing that getting a good job would somehow change the world.

Entrepreneurship is different because you see a problem and fix it yourself. Too many solutions designed for Africa come from people who haven’t lived our realities. You can’t ask farmers without internet access to rely entirely on sophisticated online tools. We understand those constraints because we’ve lived them.

Seeing farmers improve their lives because of something you’ve built—that feeling is incomparable.

Imagine your younger selves walked into this restaurant today. What would surprise them most?

Mukoma: That farming could be this exciting.

Simukoko: Farming used to be seen as hard, dirty work. Today we’re talking about satellites, AI and large language models.