Absolute's Biosolutions Arm INERA Enters Africa With Commercial Launch In Kenya

Absolute, an artificial intelligence-focused biosolutions company, has started commercial sales in Kenya through its agricultural biologicals arm INERA, marking its first entry into Africa, the company said on Tuesday.

INERA has launched six biological products covering crop nutrition and plant stress tolerance, and has signed a Kenyan distribution partner with operations in floriculture, exotic herbs and horticulture, the company said. It did not name the partner.

Kenya will serve as a base for expansion into other African markets, with launches under evaluation in East and West Africa through 2026 and 2027, alongside a build-out in the United States and Southeast Asia, Absolute said.

Africa holds close to two-thirds of the world's remaining uncultivated arable land, according to the African Development Bank, but yields lag global levels. African cereal output averaged about 1.68 tonnes per hectare in 2024, against a global average of roughly 4.2 tonnes.

Agriculture accounts for about 24% of Kenya's gross domestic product and supports the livelihoods of around 72% of the population directly or indirectly, according to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics.

Horticultural exports were worth 136.6 billion shillings in 2024, data from the Agriculture and Food Authority showed. Flowers made up 72.1 billion shillings, or about 53% of the total, with roses accounting for roughly 70% of flower export value. Fruit exports contributed a further 41 billion shillings.

Kenyan growers are contending with declining soil fertility and greater climate variability, while regulators review and withdraw a number of conventional pesticide products.

Absolute said that regulatory shift opened a longer-term opportunity for its pipeline of biological crop-protection technologies, which includes microbial, peptide and RNAi-based products. Those are separate from the six products now on sale and have yet to clear local approval processes.

The company develops products using two in-house platforms: a repository of microbes, enzymes and biomolecules collected from environments including glaciers, volcanic sites, mangroves and deserts, and an AI system that predicts biological function and designs candidate molecules for laboratory and field testing.

"Africa will be one of the world's most important agricultural regions over the coming decades, but its productivity gains cannot come from simply replicating input-intensive models built elsewhere," Founder and Group CEO Agam Khare said in a statement.

INERA said it has run more than 50,000 field trials and farmer demonstrations and maintains a validation network of more than 100 acres across over 10 agro-climatic zones. Its customers and partners include Olam, ADAMA, ITC, CropNxt and Jubilant.