When Rachel Kaunda was picked as a Mandela Washington Fellowship candidate for 2025, little did she realize the impact the shortlisting would have on Malawi’s agriculture sector.
She is the Founder and Manager of Drone Link; a tech start up that uses drones and digital technology in solving problems in agriculture, health and environmental management.
The 31-year-old described the selection process as tough having applied several times before, until in 2025 when she received an email notifying her that she had finally been shortlisted for an interview.
Read More
During the discussion, she was asked to shed more light on her business and later on she got another email informing her eligibility to join the Fellowship.
She acknowledged that she was super excited as this was a lifetime opportunity she had been looking forward to for a long time.
Kaunda started Drone Technology after noting a gap in land data collection in Malawi and after learning about it from African Drone and Data Academy she thought of applying it as a business to support different industries.
Initially she was into mining, environmental and disaster management, but after her US exposure, the earth scientist learnt that it can also be applied on some of Malawi’s pressing challenges in the agriculture sector helping farmers monitor plant health for pest and disease control.
“I saw that there are so many farmers that lose their crops because of pests and diseases. They’re so many pests that have been introduced because of climate change and using technology, I’m able to see which plants are healthy, which ones are not and because of that, now I’m helping farmers to reduce losses and also to improve their crop productivity.”
The 2025 Mandela Washington Fellowship alumna is upbeat this initiative will reverse the losses made in agriculture production in terms of yields and income.
She confessed that it hasn’t been a walk in the park as when she first started in August 2021, she used to hire drones until she got funding from Growth Accelerator Malawi.
The $40,000 funding significantly boosted her business venture as it enabled her to purchase drones and provide services in different areas.
The last born in a family of five advised young people not to be afraid of going into business but to just start with the little they have as long as they’re helping people
She acknowledged technology is a male dominated field making it hard for women to survive citing challenges such as negative stereotypes and women’s capacities and challenged them to do the best they can and provide a good solution and products on the market.
A graduate of Geology and Geography from the Chancellor College, Kaunda urged people to use ChatGPT leveraging on emerging technologies whilst adding one’s ideas in refining the existing ones.
She spoke on the lessons learnt from the US experience that have helped in reshaping her model, designing new business strategies and improved ways of approaching her business venture.
“I have a new way of doing my business. Before, even communicating the value of my business was hard; but after I went to the US, I learnt how to communicate my business in the simplest forms. Being a business that is in technology, it’s so hard for people to understand what we’re doing; but I learnt how to simplify it for clients to understand what we do and for clients to buy what we sell.
“Apart from that, we also got networks through the Fellowship from people that were selected in Malawi; the 15 fellows that were selected and the 24 fellows that I had to stay with for six weeks. I got a global professional network that even post-fellowship; I was able to go to Ethiopia because of one of the fellows that I had met in the Fellowship”