Musa Mishamo: The Tanzanian engineer watching African farms from space

Musa Mishamo is a young Tanzanian engineer, born in Gaita, near Lake Victoria in Mwanza region. He studied engineering in Dar es Salaam, dreaming of becoming an aerospace engineer.

After university, he worked with a sugarcane company in Tanzania. There he saw a big problem: farmers struggled to monitor large fields, and crop disease outbreaks were often detected too late.

That problem pushed him to co-found Rada 360, an agritech company that uses satellite imagery and agricultural data to help farmers. Instead of sending people to scout fields constantly, Rada 360 monitors crop health from space, catching signs of disease early, before they spread.

The company's team coined a simple phrase to explain the technology to farmers: "Jicho Shambani" — "an eye in the farm." Some farmers just call it "a camera." The phrase helps ordinary farmers, even those who have never touched a computer, understand what's happening.

Mishamo co-founded Rada 360 with Erick Mwandu, who has a background in agronomy. Mwandu's farming expertise complements Mishamo's engineering skills.

Mishamo's long-term vision is to build a platform holding years of agricultural data — data that future innovators can use to train new AI systems.

The interview took place on July 30 at the Somerset Westview Hotel in Nairobi's Kilimani neighbourhood.

Important: the story doesn't say how much the service costs, how farmers pay for it, or where else Rada 360 operates beyond Tanzania. If you're a farmer wanting details, you'll need to wait for more information from the company.