Chilli Cooperative - 1. "A normal person would not do this"

An Ejo Heza member holds African Birds Eye chillies. (2022)

Listening to local radio in 2019, SUBAGA Siridion heard famers talking about their successes growing chillies for export, working as a cooperative. Siridion was growing maize and beans, and like most farmers in his area of Kirehe struggling to meet his families needs, The profits the farmers on the radio were talking of got Siridion on the phone and his enquiries led back to AEE Rwanda. Over the next months, Syldion tmade many hour-long trips wto visit these farmers and learn about chilli farming.

Convinced that he could succeed in growing chillies back home in Kirehe, Siridion encouraged his neighbours to join him in planting a first crop of African Birds Eye chillies. Laughing about now, Syldion says, “they said ‘you are mad! A normal person would not do this!’ So, I had to have a strong heart and I started to grow the chillies alone.”

His profits from his first harvest were enough to convince his neighbours that this was not a crazy idea, and the Ejo Heza (“a bright future”) coopronterative was born.

Siridion, front, measure the moisture of drying chillies with an Ejo Heza farmer Calixte (2022).

Improved agricultural techniques and linkage to value chains is one of the approaches AEE Rwanda employs under its Resilience and Livelihoods programmes.

AEE Rwanda’s agronomists train participants in modern agricultural practices, work with agricultural dealers to supply the farmers up with providers of seeds and other agricultural inputs, and importantly link the famers to markets and buyers for their produce. Ejo Heza’s dried chillies are destined for Europe via a Rwandese-based exporter. Rwanda's exports of dried and fresh chilli products is growing quickly and the Chinese market is opening up, positioning chillies as an import export crop.

Ejo Heza members with a chilli plant in a banana plantation. (2022)

AEE Rwanda proposed an innovation in growing chillies: intercropping, planting chillies in the spaces between banana trees. This uses space that would otherwise be empty, the farmers still have the security of their banana crop, and both crops benefit from the necessary weeding and cultivation.

Dried Teja chillies in an Ejo Heza storehouse (2024)

Siridion crazy idea to grow chillies has changed his life. He is the president of large export co-operative, his family has health insurance, and he can now pay for a better education for his children, aged from seven to sixteen years when Ejo Heza started in 2020.

In 2021 after Ejo Heza’s sucessful first year, Siridionion was the farmer being interviewed on the radio, bringing even more interest from farmers far and wide. The cooperative’s membership has grown from 462 in 2020 to 822 farmers in 2024, from six sectors of the Kirehe district.

This is the first of series on AEE Rwanda's chilli growing project in the Kirehe district of Rwanda's Eastern Province.

---

For more information on AEE Rwanda agricultural projects, please email aee@aeerwanda.ngo.