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- For three weeks, we probably spent less than $10,000 on flights and accommodations. And we said, if we can answer three questions as a "Yes," we'll do this. Does the technology work? Does this make sense for smallholder farmers? Do we think this is scalable? And when all three of these things were "Yes," we borrowed $200,000 and we booked a one-way ticket to Kenya.

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My name is Samir Ibrahim. I'm 33 years old. I live in Nairobi, Kenya. I am the CEO and a co-founder of SunCulture. And so far, we've raised $40 million to help solve climate change. And we're just getting started.

NARRATOR: This is SunCulture. It's a company that provides solar-powered irrigation systems that help small farmers grow food without relying on rainfall.

SAMIR IBRAHIM: Climate change is affecting smallholder farmers all over the world. See, smallholder farmers rely on the rain to grow food. But with the rains becoming more unpredictable and more unreliable, their farming is also becoming more unpredictable and more unreliable.

NARRATOR: The product allows farmers to stop using diesel and petrol pumps, which emit carbon dioxide.

SAMIR IBRAHIM: They are typically the go-to source to power smallholder farms not only in Kenya, but across Africa. Our farmers are paying anywhere from 40 to 80 US dollars per acre just on the fuel costs for one of their petrol or diesel pumps. Our goal is to make sure that what our farmers pay us monthly is less than what they're paying for their dirty petrol or fuel pumps, and less than what the additional income that they would make is from using our system.

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There was no "aha" moment that led to the inception of SunCulture. It was a series of moments through education, through conversations, through reading that led me to realize that we don't have a lot of time to help solve the climate crisis.

NARRATOR: It was also an early exposure to entrepreneurship that led Samir down this career path. He grew up in Orlando, Florida. His parents both immigrated from East Africa.

SAMIR IBRAHIM: Mom was born in Burundi and then moved to Zaire when she was younger, and then grew up in Kenya. And my dad was born in Zanzibar and grew up in Tanzania. They were entrepreneurs. And I grew up always thinking that everyone just had their own little business.

I first thought I would be a professional soccer player. Then I moved into thinking I'd be an entrepreneur. I don't think I grew up always thinking that I'd be an entrepreneur in the climate crisis or fighting the climate crisis. But as soon as I started looking at the information and the data available, I couldn't see any other way to go.

The name SunCulture comes from mixing the word "Sun" and "Horticulture." It represents our attempt and ambition to bring the climate conversation into the culture of today. And ever since we started, I knew it would be a big deal for not only the world's most vulnerable, but for each and every one of us.

NARRATOR: The idea for SunCulture came about in 2011. And after placing second in a pitch competition, Samir and his partner, Charles Nichols, were even more motivated to take the idea to Africa.

- We chose Nairobi to start SunCulture for many reasons. One of the reasons is that we knew it better. I still had some family here. We had some friends here.

NARRATOR: With $5,000 of their personal money, Samir and Charles took a flight to Nairobi to build a pilot product. They tested for one month and realized they were on to something.

SAMIR IBRAHIM: We engineered and created the product and piloted the business model with our own money in our own hands. When we first started, our apartment was our warehouse, our home, and our office. We offloaded our first container ourselves. After our pilot, once we had conviction that this was going to work, we took out a loan for $200,000 to do more research and development and more prototyping.

NARRATOR: Samir and Charles borrowed the $200,000 from family members.

SAMIR IBRAHIM: We used every penny of that money. But we stretched it out for almost 2 and 1/2 years.

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NARRATOR: By 2017, Samir knew the product was ready to scale. And by 2018, SunCulture had raised over $4 million from industry leaders such as USAID and EDF France.

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SAMIR IBRAHIM: It took us five years to raise enough money to go from 2 employees to 350. And of all the solar irrigation systems on small farms in Africa, over 60% are SunCulture's.

NARRATOR: SunCulture's pre-packaged irrigation system includes a solar power pump and hundreds of other pieces that will eventually be assembled. Besides pumping orders for farms, it also powers everyday appliances.

- So the way that it works, we use a solar panel that's installed on the roof to harness the power of the sun that then goes and charges a battery. And into the battery is plugged a solar water pump. The solar water pump goes into the water source, which could be a lake, a river, a borehole, a well, or a water harvester. There's a pipe that goes up from the water pump into the irrigation, so into the sprinklers or drip irrigation.

Having a consistent and reliable supply of water means that farmers can grow all year round. We've seen in Kenya 90% of smallholder farmers over the last two years have reported losing incomes, where at SunCulture, almost the same percentage of our customers have reported increasing their incomes.

NARRATOR: And it doesn't take long for rural farmers to spread the word.

SAMIR IBRAHIM: Farmers typically reach us by word of mouth, or they find us through one of our marketing channels. And once they express interest, our team hops on a phone call so we can make sure we size the system appropriately for our customer's needs.

NARRATOR: After that, each farmer receives their pre-packaged pump. Then the SunCulture team goes to the farm for an installation.

SAMIR IBRAHIM: Our farmers can be set up and ready to start seeing results in 30 minutes.

NARRATOR: Farmers can pay up to $40 a month for 30 months, or until the pump is completely paid off.

SAMIR IBRAHIM: Initially, we were worried that the price point would be too high. But we knew that we would be able to bring the price point down. And at the end of the day, SunCulture works, and our farmers are seeing the benefits and are prospering.

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NARRATOR: Because of SunCulture's success in Nairobi, Kenya, the product has expanded to other countries in Africa like Togo, Ethiopia, and Uganda. But even with this success, Samir understands the real challenges of making an impact on fighting climate change.

- This is certainly a hard business. We are providing products and services that in other countries often are provided by governments. And there are so many challenges associated with doing this type of work. When it rains, roads get washed away. When we have power blackouts, our IT infrastructure doesn't work.

So we have to figure out, how do we deliver goods to people when they most need them? We need to be 1,000 times bigger in order to really solve the climate crisis and all the problems that come with it. So we're just getting started, and there's a lot of work to do.

NARRATOR: Today, SunCulture is the largest solar pump distributor for smallholder farmers in Africa, and Samir has his eye on expanding beyond the continent.

SAMIR IBRAHIM: For the next three to four years, we'll be focused on sub-Saharan Africa. And then we'll start exploring partnerships in other parts of the world. I believe SunCulture can get to the size of a company to be taken public in the next few years. And that's the size of company we need to get to in order to move the type of money we need to move into climate change.

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- Thank you.

- [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]

- Welcome.

- Yeah.

- We need more climate champions. We need more climate warriors. We need people who have the opportunity to get involved in this work to get involved in this work. Because at the end of the day, nothing else matters if we don't have this planet to live on.

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