South African startup SpekTech is utilising technologies such as e-commerce, artificial intelligence (AI) and remote sensing to help scale land restoration and climate impact initiatives.
Founded by Ephraim Moss and Michalya Schonwald Moss in 2022, SpekTech wants to do its bit to address the climate crisis from Africa, and overcome challenges such as funding gaps, limited climate data, ineffective reporting and verification mechanisms and smallholder inclusion in the climate impact market.
Its platform aims to address all these issues, leveraging technology and private sector investment towards sustainable climate impact initiatives in Africa, beyond the carbon market limitations.
“Our vision is to be the global leader in technology solutions for scaling land restoration and climate impact initiatives, and setting new standards for sustainability and transparency for climate action,” said Moss.
The platform does various things. It allows users to generate new revenue streams through e-commerce ecosystems to finance land restoration and climate impact initiatives, driving green growth and sustainable investment. It leverages AI, machine learning and remote sensing technologies to map, monitor and measure climate impact data in real-time, building trust with stakeholders through blockchain-verified data. Its fund distribution system, meanwhile, ensures all funds are well-spent.
“We enable seamless, traceable, funding channels, guaranteeing that every stakeholder, especially those often overlooked in Africa, benefit from financial inclusion,” said Moss.
“In an era where accountability is paramount, our platform provides unparalleled transparency, standard-setting, metrics, guidelines and accessible routes to verifiable climate impact initiatives in real-time, using a combination of AI, remote sensing, machine learning and blockchain technologies.”
The startup’s first client has secured over 40 merchants and over 11,000 environmentally conscious consumers via the platform, and sold over 40,000 spekboom trees. SpekTech has developed integrations for four of the largest e-commerce platforms, and partnered with two large financial institutions in South Africa and several environmental organisations involved in restoration work.
“We have a consistent order conversion rate of five to seven per cent. Investec has purchased several hectares of spekboom, and payment gateways like HappyPay have partnered with us to contribute one per cent of fees towards land restoration,” said Moss.
SpekTech – which was recently selected to take part in the Ecosystem Restoration Africa programme run by Village Capital – has bootstrapped its current growth, but is now looking to raise US$2 million in seed stage capital for technological development, marketing and sales. The company employs both B2C and B2B2C business models, and has multiple revenue streams. It charges a 20 per cent management fee on contributions to climate impact projects to the merchant and usage of the platform and licensing fees to climate impact projects.
“SpekTech is positioned to scale by refining its technology, expanding our customer base, and developing partnerships with more e-commerce ecosystems, financial institutions and payment gateways,” said Moss.
