Technology: Pepper flakes turning a hot profit for farmers

By Bob Koigi

Kenya: A new technology to mill dried chilli pepper that is four times faster than flaking by hand has found its way into Kenya.

The technology, borrowed from Ethiopia, allows pepper farmers to save hours of labour in pepper processing.

This increases returns from the world’s most consumed spice - used by a quarter of the world’s population.

High value crop

The Pepper Eater machine developed by Stanford University students for the more than 400,000 Ethiopian women who process pepper by hand turns fresh peppers into higher-value dried flakes, seeds, and powder.

The tiring work leaves their hands covered in hot pepper oil and their eyes, noses, and throats burning from pepper dust.

The small-scale pepper grinder consists of a pair of rollers made of interlocking disks. One of the rollers is driven by a hand crank and draws the dried peppers between the two rollers using small teeth on the larger disks. A preliminary study in Ethiopia showed that after investing Sh2,175 ($25) to buy the Pepper Eater, one can process four times more peppers, increasing annual income by Sh15,399 ($177).

 This will realise a seven-fold return on investment in one year. Pilot users also gained an additional 300 hours a year for other income-generating activities after the Pepper Eater cut the pepper processing time by 75 per cent.

Now vanguard Ethiopian traders are crossing to the border town of Moyale to sell the technology at $40 and the uptake in the area has been impressive.

Though Kenya doesn’t enjoy the same scale of pepper farming as Ethiopia, according to Bridgenet Africa, areas like Moyale are actively engaged in pepper farming and trading.

Farming population

 There are only about 200,000 pepper farmers in Moyale compared to more than a million in Ethiopia.

From the village of Heilu in Moyale county, 30-year-old Gelila travels three hours by bus to the closest market to sell peppers alongside some 20 other traders who process whole dried red peppers. They spend each day tearing the whole peppers into small pieces, and then flakes, and separating the seeds by hand.

They have become used to teary eyes, but the long hours have been debilitating. Gelila, for example, wakes up at 5:00am to prepare her two sons for school and drop them off before heading to the the bus stop for a 7am pick up.

“It’s a three hour ride, so I have to be here by 7am, so that I can be in the market at 10am, and then take the whole day working on the pepper,” says Gelila. “If I miss the bus by even 30 minutes my whole day is ruined and I won’t make enough profit.”

The women sell the processed peppers to local hotels, customers in the markets and traders from surrounding districts.

However, 20 pepper traders have now bought the Pepper Eater, which they are loaning to those who haven’t managed to purchase one, like Gelila.

 “We rent it in hours. You pay Sh200 per hour and I only need to use it for two hours to process more than 100 kilos of pepper, something that would take me a whole day,” said Gelila.

The change in processing capacity comes at a time when the worldwide production of pepper has hit 3 billion kilos per year.

The majority comes from Africa and Asia, where pepper processing by hand is still very common.       

—FarmBizAfrica