After installing CARTOframes, we need to create a CARTO API key in order to be able to use the functionality from the library. The library interacts with the CARTO infrastructure, similarly to the ArcGIS API for Python in Chapter 9, ArcGIS API for Python and ArcGIS Online. The API key can be used for writing dataframes to an account, reading from private tables, and visualizing data on maps. CARTO provides API keys for education and nonprofit uses, among others. If you're a student, you can get access to an API key by signing up to GitHub's student developer pack: https://education.github.com/pack.